Attorney Salary in New Jersey 2026,
$161,430 Median | BLS Data by City

New Jersey attorneys earn a median $161,430 a year, $77.61 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $116,060 and $220,100 and a full range of $93,810 to $328,270. That is 1.1% above the $159,670 national median, and the wide spread means the median describes very few individual lawyers well.

Of the metros BLS reports as New Jersey-only, Trenton-Princeton leads at $138,760, then Atlantic City-Hammonton at $133,730 and Vineland at $108,910. All three sit below the statewide $161,430 because the northern counties are counted inside the New York-Newark-Jersey City multi-state metro and Camden inside Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, neither of which is a New Jersey area in the OEWS tables.

For anyone practising in the northern counties, generally yes. New Jersey accepts Uniform Bar Examination score transfer, which makes the second admission administratively cheap, and it opens the Manhattan-facing corporate and financial work that produces the New Jersey top-decile figure of $328,270. It also means a New York non-resident tax return each year, since the two states have no reciprocity agreement.

New Jersey's gross income tax is progressive to 10.75%, and a salary at the $161,430 median falls in the 6.37% bracket. No New Jersey city taxes employee wages. Where the money actually goes is cross-border and property: New York work triggers a non-resident New York return, Philadelphia's wage tax reaches South Jersey commuters despite New Jersey-Pennsylvania reciprocity, and New Jersey property taxes are the highest in the country.

Because two legal economies share one state. Corporate, pharmaceutical regulatory, financial services and complex litigation practice — much of it oriented toward New York and the Princeton corridor — sits at the $220,100 seventy-fifth percentile and above. County-level matrimonial, municipal, criminal defence and general practice, plus the state's heavy use of judicial clerkships as an entry route, populates the $93,810 tenth percentile. Practice area, not seniority, sorts them.

It depresses the bottom of the distribution and improves what comes after it. New Jersey places an unusually large share of new admittees into a year of judicial clerkship with the Superior Court, paid well below firm associate scale, which is part of why the tenth percentile sits at $93,810. The trade is real: a New Jersey clerkship is a strong credential with the state's litigation firms, and the alumni typically re-enter at or above the $116,060 twenty-fifth percentile.

The OEWS survey covers employed lawyers on a payroll. It does not capture solo and small-firm practitioners drawing partnership distributions, who make up a large share of New Jersey's bar in the central and southern counties, and it does not separate contract or per-diem appearance work from salaried practice. Neither adjustment is likely to move the $161,430 median much, but it means the low end of the published band is a payroll figure rather than a complete picture of what New Jersey lawyers earn.

Client type and the New York question. In-house work with the state's pharmaceutical, medical device and financial employers pays reliably in the upper half of the band and carries bonus structures the OEWS figure does not isolate. Firm practice tied to Manhattan or Philadelphia billing rates pays above firm practice tied to county courthouses. Beyond that, New Jersey's contingent-fee practice — product liability, mass tort and personal injury, in a state with substantial mass tort litigation — is what produces the $328,270 ninetieth percentile, and it is income that arrives in lumps rather than salary.