By Abbey Carbajal
Law school tuition has skyrocketed over the past decades. Public law school tuition increased 889% in the past 35 years and private law school is 2.45 times as expensive in 2025 as it was in 1985 after adjusting for inflation. Several elite law schools charge over $80,000 in tuition alone, with Columbia Law School charging the most at $88,996 in tuition per year.
As a result of rising costs, 85% of law school graduates go into debt to cover tuition and living expenses, with the average graduate owing $137,500 in student loans. This burden exacerbates existing inequalities. Over a decade ago, “61 percent of [B]lack law students and 56 percent of Hispanic law students in [a] 2015 survey expected debt above $100,000, compared to about 40% of white and Asian students. And 43 percent of [B]lack law students in 2015 expected debt above $120,000.” In 2023, Black graduates’ student loan debt was reported to be around 7.84% higher than that of their white peers. These problems are likely going to worsen as the Federal Graduate PLUS loan program was terminated on July 1, 2026 for new borrowers, forcing law students to find different, and likely more costly, ways to pay for tuition and living expenses.
For students interested in the plaintiffs’ bar, these financial pressures collide with another problem: a lack of reliable information about what plaintiff-side careers actually pay. Students routinely compare a highly transparent BigLaw compensation structure against a plaintiffs’ bar where salary, bonus, and advancement information can be difficult to find. NPLA’s Pay Transparency Report aims to begin closing that information gap, so students can evaluate plaintiff-side careers based on facts rather than uncertainty.
1. The Importance of Pay Transparency
Accordingly, it is no surprise that starting salaries are a significant consideration for law students when exploring potential career paths. However, there is minimal public information available on starting salaries at plaintiffs' firms. This lack of transparency raises several notable implications.
First, law students cannot make informed decisions on potential career paths without access to salary information. As the National Plaintiffs’ Law Association (NPLA) stated in its Statement on Law Schools’ Accelerated Hiring Timelines, “[f]irst-year law students are being forced to make career decisions within their first semester of law school. . . . Unfortunately, this trend of increasingly early recruitment timelines shows no signs of slowing down, with law firms beginning to target incoming J.D. students in the class of 2029.” In speaking with law students, NPLA student leaders have noticed a pattern: first-year law students are hesitant to opt out of early on-campus recruiting when they do not know what the financial realities are on the other side of the “v.” BigLaw firm salaries follow publicly available lockstep pay structures, which to many first-year law students, signals security and predictability. Consequently, a student who wants to pursue plaintiff-side work may nonetheless go to a defense-side firm simply because one path comes with readily accessible compensation information and the other requires a leap of faith. An opaque salary landscape harms students by limiting their ability to make informed career decisions and meaningfully assess the compensation prospect of various career paths.
Second, the lack of pay transparency disproportionately harms attorneys from underrepresented groups and perpetuates existing pay disparities. Inequities in compensation remain widespread. On average, women earn 16% less than their male counterparts. These disparities are even more pronounced at the intersection of gender, race, and ethnicity, where Black women are paid 64% and Latinas are paid 55% of what their white, male counterparts are. More specifically, with respect to private-practice attorneys, one article notes that:
“There is a gender earnings gap of 18 percent among private practitioners. Some of this gap is attributable to differences in human capital assets and the female lawyers’ overrepresentation in less lucrative law firm roles and practice areas. Nevertheless, an earnings gap of 8 percent remains after controlling for the aforementioned factors, and 79 percent of the earnings gap is unexplained, signifying that omitted variables, including possible discrimination, are driving this gap.”
Reduced salary transparency disadvantages attorneys from underrepresented groups, who are often excluded from the informal networks through which compensation information is shared. As a result, they may lack both the bargaining power and information necessary to assess and negotiate fair compensation, which in turn, exacerbates existing pay inequities.
Lastly, the lack of publicly available compensation benchmarks hurts both students and firms. Compensation information sometimes circulates through word of mouth; however, such information is often incomplete, inaccurate, or difficult to verify. Without this information, students cannot accurately assess whether an offer is competitive and firms cannot evaluate how their compensation compares to that of their competitors. Thus, both sides are left without objective reference points to guide negotiations.
Greater transparency can help dispel the assumption that pursuing meaningful plaintiff-side work necessarily requires sacrificing financial stability. Compensation structures across the plaintiffs’ bar vary considerably, and base salary alone may not capture bonuses, performance-based compensation, or longer-term upsides. Better information allows students to compare opportunities holistically and reinforces that lawyers can build financially viable and rewarding careers.
2. Using NPLA’s Pay Transparency Report
Noticing the absence of salary information within the plaintiffs’ bar, NPLA launched its inaugural pay transparency survey during the 2024–25 academic year and published a report detailing the findings in October 2026. The report provides students with concrete benchmarks on mean and median starting salary, bonuses, and salary and bonus ranges. Such figures give students something the plaintiffs’ bar has historically lacked: a data-backed reference point for evaluating an offer.
NPLA’s report also revealed that over 65% of respondents worked at firms where incoming associates could not negotiate their starting salary. Fewer than 10% of respondents reported that negotiation was possible, but noted that it was generally reserved for lateral hires or candidates coming from a judicial clerkship. Although not every offer can—or realistically should—be negotiated, this report is nevertheless a valuable resource for both evaluating the competitiveness of an offer and, where possible, negotiating its terms.
Whether evaluating an offer for financial fit or considering if negotiation is appropriate, students should consider four key factors alongside the data in NPLA’s report.
First, students should understand the firm with which they are negotiating or evaluating an offer. Factors such as firm size, number of offices, practice areas, location, and non-salary benefits can help provide context for how the firm operates and what it may realistically offer. For example, a smaller firm may offer a lower base salary but greater bonus potential, while a larger firm may offer a higher base salary but more limited bonus opportunities. Students should compare total compensation rather than base salary alone. Health insurance, retirement contributions, bar expenses, professional-development funding, clerkship bonuses, parental leave, remote-work flexibility, and bonus structures can materially change the value of an offer.
Second, students should assess their own financial circumstances, including student debt, local housing and living costs, transportation expenses, and family obligations. Understanding those needs can help students determine their minimum acceptable compensation and whether an offer is financially workable, while NPLA’s market data can help assess whether compensation is competitive with comparable opportunities.
Third, students should identify the value they would bring to the firm. One of the exciting aspects of the plaintiffs’ bar is that compensation is based on the quality of work one produces, rather than following a rigid, lockstep salary structure. Prior work experience, language skills, additional graduate degrees, academic achievements, extracurricular activities, or established relationships within the plaintiffs’ bar may distinguish one candidate from another. Casting a wide net in the job search can also provide leverage in negotiations, as competing offers can supply useful context in compensation discussions.
Finally, any negotiation should remain collaborative. Compensation discussions are often among a candidate’s first interactions with a potential employer, so they should be framed as conversations rather than demands. Whenever possible, compensation should be discussed by phone or in person, with salary considered alongside the broader opportunity and NPLA’s data used as an objective reference point. Ultimately, the strongest compensation decisions are grounded in a clear understanding of a candidate’s value, financial circumstances, the firm’s context, and concrete market data.
3. What’s Next?
NPLA will continue advocating for greater pay transparency across the plaintiffs’ bar. As part of this effort, we are inviting firms to take NPLA’s Pay Transparency Pledge, which calls on firms to publicly disclose base salaries of first-year associates, and explain how they structure bonuses and raises. Greater transparency can strengthen firms’ recruiting efforts by giving students greater confidence that plaintiff-side careers can offer both meaningful work and financial stability. NPLA also encourages readers to look out for NPLA’s next salary transparency survey, which will come out soon. The expanded survey will gather more information on first-year and senior associate salaries, bonuses, clerkship bonuses, and the benefits firms offer. NPLA’s goal is ultimately bigger than collecting salary data. We want students considering plaintiff-side careers to have the information they need to make those decisions confidently, and we want plaintiffs’ firms to have the tools they need to compete for the extraordinary young talent already eager to join this work. Greater pay transparency moves both sides closer to that goal.
