Best Practices
How Much is a Lawyer? Hourly Rates by State and More
Law firm financial management is a common source of confusion among lawyers. You need to understand cash flow, trust account management, and profitability while simultaneously managing cases. Before tackling these tasks, you must also answer one fundamental question: how should you structure your attorney fees?
While you can use various fee arrangements in your law firm, an hourly rate should serve as the baseline of most fee structures. Say you intend to charge flat fees only. You can't define your flat fee schedule without first knowing your hourly rate and the number of hours required to handle different case types. The same is true for retainer-based fees, which are deposits on future hourly work.
Therefore, for most practices, setting an appropriate hourly rate for your legal services should be a top priority for your law firm and helps answer the question, “how much is a lawyer?” when clients inevitably ask.
This guide will go over the average hourly rates and retainer fees for U.S.-based lawyers, common fee arrangements, key factors for determining rates, and additional tips to improve your law firm’s billing system.
Average Lawyer Hourly Rates by State
The table below documents the average lawyer's hourly rate by state, (including Washington D.C.), as reported by Statista. Rows designated with “-” indicate data that wasn’t available.
| State | Average Hourly Rate 2023 | Average Hourly Rate 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama | $208 | $211 |
| Alaska | - | - |
| Arizona | $266 | $268 |
| Arkansas | $242 | $248 |
| California | $344 | $358 |
| Colorado | $261 | $271 |
| Connecticut | $342 | $350 |
| Delaware | $344 | $358 |
| District of Columbia | $392 | $424 |
| Florida | $297 | $303 |
| Georgia | $286 | $288 |
| Hawaii | - | - |
| Idaho | $233 | $192 |
| Illinois | $305 | $235 |
| Indiana | $242 | $314 |
| Iowa | $202 | $251 |
| Kansas | $227 | $248 |
| Kentucky | $204 | $216 |
| Louisiana | $245 | $250 |
| Maine | $193 | $195 |
| Maryland | $310 | $319 |
| Massachusetts | $285 | $290 |
| Michigan | $266 | $269 |
| Minnesota | $271 | $274 |
| Mississippi | $217 | $225 |
| Missouri | $249 | $254 |
| Montana | $199 | $213 |
| Nebraska | $218 | $219 |
| Nevada | $311 | $318 |
| New Hampshire | $248 | $256 |
| New Jersey | $306 | $330 |
| New Mexico | $242 | $244 |
| New York | $358 | $378 |
| North Carolina | $254 | $262 |
| North Dakota | $253 | $268 |
| Ohio | $224 | $238 |
| Oklahoma | $235 | $230 |
| Oregon | $255 | $263 |
| Pennsylvania | $288 | $290 |
| Rhode Island | $240 | $238 |
| South Carolina | $249 | $259 |
| South Dakota | $199 | $189 |
| Tennessee | $233 | $247 |
| Texas | $300 | $313 |
| Utah | $250 | $260 |
| Vermont | $226 | $235 |
| Virginia | $295 | $304 |
| Washington | $288 | $296 |
| West Virginia | $162 | $168 |
| Wisconsin | $231 | $251 |
| Wyoming | $241 | $266 |
If you’re wondering how much to charge per hour, these average attorney rates offer a few different observations:
- Average lawyer hourly rates around the country range from $392 to $162.
- In 2023, the median hourly rate was $249 and the average was $257.
- West Virginia had the cheapest average lawyer hourly rate in 2023.
- Washington D.C. had the highest average hourly rate in 2023 of all U.S. states and regions, followed by New York.
- Some average lawyer hourly rates changed over time. Lawyer rates grew more than 20% in Illinois and Idaho while they dropped nearly 20% or more in Iowa and Indiana.
Keep these data points in mind as you set your law firm’s pricing and hourly rates. For example, you may have a harder time commanding a New York rate if you live in Vermont.
What is the Average Lawyer Retainer Fee?
The average lawyer retainer fee ranged from $1,973 to $4,015 in 2023, according to our 2024 Benchmark Report Part 1: Law Firm Finances. We break down these averages by practice area below:
| Practice Area | Retainer Amount Requested |
|---|---|
| Bankruptcy | $4,015 |
| Family Law | $3,163 |
| Real Estate | $2,860 |
| Employment | $2,835 |
| Criminal Law | $2,816 |
| Matrimonial | $2,710 |
| Trust and Estate (includes Probate) | $2,172 |
| Immigration | $1,973 |
Case complexity and executed services can vary between practice areas. We recommend using these averages as a starting point when considering your retainer fees.
What Are Common Fee Arrangements?
According to the American Bar Association (ABA), hourly billing is the most commonly used fee arrangement. However, your law firm can leverage several other attorney fee agreements.
Hourly Fees
Hourly billing ties your income directly to the time spent on a case. If you can manage the process of hourly billing, this system can help your law firm accurately bill for their work.
Retainer Fees
Retainer fees rely on hourly bill rates, but the client pays upfront. The retainer is a deposit the client pays on future services.
Contingency Fees
Contingency fees are set as a percentage of the amount awarded in a case. This structure is only appropriate for cases you can win. If your client receives no award or settlement, you won't get paid.
In contingency relationships, you might consider requiring the client to pay certain expenses regardless of the outcome. You'd outline those expenses in the fee agreements. You could also implement a sliding scale, with a fee percentage that varies based on how far the case went before settling.
What Additional Costs Should Lawyers Charge To Clients?
Lawyers should charge all case-related costs to their clients and include this term in their fee agreement. This includes filing fees, witness costs, and other expenses paid on behalf of the client.
Below are examples of costs to include:
- Legal research fees
- Expert witness fees
- Travel expenses
- Court filing fees
- Deposition fees
- Mediation fees
- Appellate fees
- Laboratory fees
- Administrative fees
Take our continuing legal education (CLE) course on the Current Trends in Attorney Fee Structures to learn about attorney fee agreements, various billing models, and your fiduciary duty as a lawyer.
How to Determine Law Firm Rates
Your field of law, level of experience, the average lawyer hourly rate in your region, and the nature of the case can help you determine the right pricing for your firm.
Field of Law
Not all lawyers bill top dollar. Our Benchmark Report found that bankruptcy and family law lawyers charge more than matrimonial and immigration lawyers.
As a general rule, highly specialized or technical lawyers can set higher hourly rates.
Local Market Rates
Your location defines how much competition you face, the level of demand for your services, and the income levels of prospective clients. The local cost of living and its impact on rent and wages also impacts your rates.
If you live in a rural area, for example, there may be no other lawyers nearby. But there may be a small pool of available clients who can afford your services.
Nature of the Case
Your prices may also need to shift based on the complexity of your case. Consider the court appearances, legal research, and dedicated resources you’ll need for case preparation.Having multiple parties, jurisdictions, and witnesses can further complicate the case.
Download our Lawyer Billing Toolkit eBook to learn about flexible fee structures, adjusting billing to client needs, and how to use technology to improve payments and billing.
Quick Tips for Improving the Client Billing Experience
Law firms can streamline billing by creating an organized billing system and offering clients flexibility. For example, our 2024 Legal Industry Report found that 56% of law firms set up payment plans for clients. Of those who offered this, 48% were able to collect more over the course of a case.
Below are a few client billing best practices your law firm can keep in mind:
- Be upfront with clients about costs, payment terms, and payment methods.
- Have billing guidelines readily available for clients to access online.
- Send itemized bills regularly and proactively check in with clients about invoices.
- Offer multiple ways to pay including card, eCheck, and ACH transfers.
- Provide several payment options including payment plans and legal fee financing.
- Use law firm software to expedite billing, time tracking, and analysis to better understand your law firm’s financial health.
Importance of Detailed Time and Expense Tracking
A reliable system for timekeeping plus a targeted hourly bill rate are foundational pieces of your law firm's billing process. Without these, you'll struggle to manage your law firm’s billing process and grow your firm efficiently.
The typical legal invoicing practice is to bill in increments of one-tenth of an hour. Many attorneys use a billable hours chart to support that effort. The chart converts minutes into an appropriate billing segment.
For example, you can determine that a six-minute phone call equates to 0.1 billable hours.
To bill for that phone call, you must:
- Diligently log task start and end times.
- Record detailed, clear, and client-friendly task descriptions to use in legal invoices.
Ideally, you'd use law firm billing software like LawPay, which automatically creates invoices from your time records. That way, you'd only write the descriptions once as you complete tasks—rather than re-entering them in an invoice later.
You might wonder if it makes more sense to skip all that record-keeping and charge flat fees instead.
Unfortunately, the answer is no.
Accurate time records are essential to running your law firm, no matter how you charge. Time records help you:
- Document how you spend your time and reveal areas of inefficiency.
- Validate or invalidate any flat fees you're charging.
- Provide valuable talking points for client calls.
For example, let’s say you set a flat fee assuming 100 hours of work for a certain type of case. If time records show you're spending 125 hours on average, you’ll need to adjust your fee schedule to remain profitable.
Get a Better Understanding of Billing and Pricing with LawPay
While there are different fee structures available to you, effective law firm billing relies (in most cases) on an hourly rate and a reliable timekeeping system. Your hourly rate should be a function of your field, experience level, and the average attorney fees by state.
As for timekeeping, many lawyers use technology to streamline the process, like LawPay. A simple yet powerful law firm billing software that supports time and expense tracking, billing and invoicing, trust account reconciliation, and client-friendly online payment options.
Linking time tracking with invoicing and payments makes it easy for law firms to create accurate and detailed invoices, and accept payments—all while maintaining compliance with state bar guidelines.
To learn more about how LawPay can help you manage and grow your law firm through accurate timekeeping and invoicing, schedule a demo today.