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It Pays To Be A Lawyer In DC … A Lot

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On average, lawyers in the nation’s capital get paid more than lawyers in any other major city, and a whole lot more than the national average.

The average lawyer in Washington, D.C., made more than $160,000 in 2014, according to data from the D.C. Office of Revenue Analysis (ORA). That’s around $15,000 more than a lawyer in New York, and almost double the average pay of the average attorney.

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“As the seat of the Federal Government and the Supreme Court, the importance of the legal sector in the District’s economy is not surprising, but other places like New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco would seemingly offer stiff competition to the District’s white shoe firms in terms of average pay,” Steven Giachetti, a financial analyst at ORA, wrote on the agency’s blog.

That, however, is not the case. In fact, since 2001, the pay gap between D.C. and other comparable cities has widened.

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In 2001, pay rates for all the major cities hovered between $80,000 and $100,000. Since then, D.C. is the only city to see an average lawyer salary above $160,000, with the rest falling between $120,000 and $145,000.

The average pay on an American lawyer during that same time period rose from around $61,000 to around $88,000.

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