Paralegal Salary in Texas 2026,
$62,310 Median | BLS Data by City

Texas paralegals earn a median $62,310 a year, $29.96 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $47,410 and $77,740 and a full range of $39,190 to $98,440. That is 0.9% below the $62,890 national median before tax, and above it after, because Texas takes no income tax.

Midland at $64,500, narrowly ahead of Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos at $64,140, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington at $63,220, Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands at $62,730 and Odessa at $59,890. The whole table spans under five thousand dollars, which is unusual — in Texas the practice area you work in matters far more than the metro you work in.

No. Texas does not license, register or certify paralegals, and there is no state examination or title protection. What employers screen on is an ABA-approved paralegal programme or certificate plus experience. Texas does, however, run a paralegal board certification programme through the Texas Board of Legal Specialization covering defined practice areas — a genuine differentiator that most states have no analogue for — alongside the national NALA and NFPA credentials.

No. Texas has no personal income tax and no local income tax, so a paralegal at the state median of $62,310 pays nothing to the state. At this salary level that is worth several thousand dollars a year against a graduated-rate state, which is the main reason Texas's near-parity with the national median understates the real standard of living here.

Practice area and autonomy, almost entirely. The Texas 25th percentile is populated by insurance defence, family law and high-volume collections work; the 75th percentile sits in energy transactions, complex commercial litigation with e-discovery ownership, intellectual property prosecution support and corporate legal operations. Texas Board of Legal Specialization board certification is the visible signal of the second group, and in Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth it is what firms use to justify the higher band.

Because paralegal pay in Texas is set by practice area rather than geography, and the practice areas are distributed across the state rather than concentrated in one city. Energy work runs from Houston to Midland, litigation support exists everywhere there is a courthouse, and Austin's state-government and technology practices pay similarly to Dallas corporate work. The result is Midland at $64,500 and Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands at $62,730 barely two thousand dollars apart, with the real variance — $39,190 to $98,440 — living inside every one of those metros.

SOC 23-2011 pools paralegals with legal assistants, and in Texas that second group includes a large number of roles that are administrative rather than substantive. The $39,190 tenth percentile largely reflects those. Anyone with an ABA-approved credential doing substantive case work should read the $47,410 twenty-fifth percentile as the realistic floor, not the tenth.

It is the mechanic that most changes actual earnings, and it depends on classification. Paralegals are generally non-exempt under federal wage law, so litigation-heavy periods — trial preparation, closing cycles, large document productions — are paid at overtime rates on top of the base figure. In Houston energy transactional practice and Dallas-Fort Worth commercial litigation, that can add materially to a salary sitting at the $62,310 median, and none of the additional amount is taxed by Texas.