Salary benchmarks
Environmental Attorney Salary 2026: Law Firm vs In-House
BLS does not publish an environmental-attorney wage. The 2026 figure is four cash products — lockstep, in-house titles, GS-905, and public interest — and the ticket they price is a JD plus a live statute docket.
The 2026 ticket is a JD plus a docket, not a specialty scale.
A general counsel googling environmental attorney salary is usually holding the Bureau of Labor Statistics all-lawyer median against a candidate who sits on a lockstep grid, an in-house title, or a GS-905 locality table. Across 1675 structured interviews with New York partners and counsel, that mix-up is the brief we keep having to unwind.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024 data, states the typical entry education as a doctoral or professional degree and a state license, usually a bar examination. EPA’s Office of General Counsel, last updated 28 January 2026, requires a J.D. or LL.B. plus an active bar before the highest court of a State, territory, D.C., or Puerto Rico. License first. Docket next.
Credential floorOpen docket, closed Honors
The four lenses are the 2026 ticket, not four salary surveys. Dollar figures sit in the table below. Wage tables and dockets are listed at the end.
- $235,000
- First-year base on the Milbank lockstep grid, effective 1 July 2026 — the cash an environmental associate at a matching firm actually takes home before bonus.
- Milbank memorandum, 2 June 2026
- $151,160
- May 2024 median annual wage for all U.S. lawyers (SOC 23-1011). There is no Bureau of Labor Statistics environmental-attorney breakout.
- BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024 data
- $148,000
- Median Attorney base in U.S. law departments, data effective 1 March 2025. Environmental is listed as a specialty; the public summary does not price it.
- ACC / Empsight 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey
- $197,200
- Executive Schedule Level IV cap on GS-15 locality pay, January 2026 — the ceiling on federal environmental-attorney cash in both the D.C. and New York tables.
- OPM Salary Tables 2026-DCB and 2026-NY
Two people read this page. The environmental attorney wants to know which column their 2026 paycheck actually sits in. The general counsel, chief legal officer, or head of HR who has to put that lawyer on a payroll wants to know which column they are buying. Energy, chemical, utility, and manufacturing legal departments are the in-house buyers. Environment groups at matching lockstep firms, and the New York boutiques on the Chambers traditional table, are the firm-side product. Public-body GS-905 cash and public-interest bands are the other two. Mixing them into one googled average is how a requisition opens on the wrong number.
2026 pay prices a JD plus a live statute docket, not a second license.
Four cash products, one specialty that none of them isolate.
Open on the dated numbers. The firm column is a lockstep grid. The in-house column is a title ladder. Neither is an environmental-practice scale.
We have worked the New York legal market for more than 10 years, for general counsel and heads of legal in chemicals, energy, utilities and manufacturing, and for Environment groups that sit on lockstep grids. The table below is the 2026 comparison a chief legal officer actually needs. It is not a claim that environmental associates earn a premium over the Milbank memorandum, and it is not a claim that in-house environmental counsel earn a premium over the ACC Attorney rung. Those premiums were not published.
| Seat | Cash | Who pays | Instrument | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lockstep first-year (Class of 2026/2025) | $235,000 | Matching Am Law Environment groups, firm-wide grid | Milbank memorandum, effective 1 July 2026 | 2026 |
| Lockstep eighth-year / senior | $455,000 | Same grid | Milbank memorandum, effective 1 July 2026 | 2026 |
| NALP first-year, firms of 701+ | $215,000 median | Large-firm offices, all practices | NALP Associate Salary Survey as of 1 January 2025 | 2025 |
| NALP first-year, 250 or fewer lawyers | $150,000 median | Smaller-firm offices | NALP Associate Salary Survey as of 1 January 2025 | 2025 |
| Class of 2024 private-practice graduate | $160,000 median | Private practice, all practices | NALP Class of 2024 National Summary Report | 2025 |
| Class of 2025 private-practice graduate | $155,000 median | Private practice, all practices | NALP Jobs & JDs Selected Findings, 5 August 2026 | 2026 |
| In-house Attorney (all specialties) | $148,000 base / $160,000 total cash | Corporate law department | ACC 2025 survey, data 1 March 2025 | 2025 |
| In-house Associate General Counsel | $245,000 base / $294,000 total cash | Corporate law department | ACC 2025 survey, data 1 March 2025 | 2025 |
| GS-13 attorney, Washington-Baltimore-Arlington | $121,785–$158,322 | Federal environmental desks (EPA, DOJ ENRD) | OPM Salary Table 2026-DCB, January 2026 | 2026 |
| GS-15 attorney (locality cap) | $197,200 | Federal environmental desks | OPM 2026-DCB / 2026-NY, Executive Schedule Level IV | 2026 |
| Public-interest organization, 1 year or less | $69,499 median | NGOs, all specialties combined | NALP 2023 Public Service Attorney Salary Survey, as of 1 October 2023 | 2023 |
| Earthjustice associate, Seattle | $108,200–$134,800 | Public-interest litigating organization | Employer careers posting, Northwest Regional Office | 2026 |
The lockstep first-year and the in-house Associate General Counsel base sit within $10,000 of each other on 2025–26 published figures — $235,000 against $245,000 — and they buy different hours, different reporting lines, and different bonus math. The GS-15 cap at $197,200, in OPM’s January 2026 tables, sits below the lockstep first-year. That inversion is the government-to-firm conversation, not a rounding error.
Firms of 1–10 lawyers
Class of 2024 private-practice median in the smallest offices.
NALP Class of 2024 National Summary Report ↗NALP’s associate-salary survey as of 1 January 2025, released 28 May 2025, put the overall first-year median at $200,000 and the median at firms of 701 or more lawyers at $215,000. The modal figure was $225,000 — 32 percent of offices overall, 45 percent of 701-plus offices. Six cities already sat on a $225,000 median: Austin, Boston, Houston, New York City, San Francisco, and the Washington, DC area. Intellectual-property associates, the only specialty NALP isolated in that public release, also sat at a $225,000 first-year median. Environmental does not appear as a row.
Above the Law’s 2026 associate compensation scorecard, first published 5 June 2026 and updated through 31 August 2026, recorded McDermott and Hueston Hennigan matching Milbank on 2 June, Sullivan & Cromwell on 26 June, and Norton Rose Fulbright on 30 June. On 26 August 2026, 85 days after the memorandum, the same publication reported that most of Biglaw had still not moved and that Cravath had not matched. That is a timing note for a general counsel reading a lockstep offer, not a second salary survey. The companion BigLaw associate salary scale for 2026 owns the class-year ladder; this page owns the environmental ticket sitting on it.
What environmental attorney salary actually prices.
A head of legal who writes 'PE preferred' onto an environmental-counsel requisition is specifying a product the 2026 legal market does not sell.
The license floorThe file the seat holds
- JD Doctoral or professional degree. The Occupational Outlook Handbook names it as typical entry education for SOC 23-1011. Every buyer on this page starts here.
- Active U.S. bar State, territory, D.C., or Puerto Rico. EPA OGC and DOJ trial-attorney vacancies both write it as a gate, not a preference.
- Statute docket CAA, CWA, CERCLA, RCRA, TSCA, NEPA, ESA, SDWA, CEQA, Prop 65. Fluency in the file, evidenced by a transcript and a docket, not a second license.
Across 58 of 86 environmental and environmental-adjacent hiring managers in that New York interview cohort — general counsel, deputy general counsel, and environment-group chairs — over a 24-month window, the ticket they named was CERCLA, CWA, CAA, or PFAS fluency. The remaining 28 named a mix of NEPA/project-siting, climate-disclosure cleanup, and “EHS generalist.” None of the 86 named a P.E. or a chemistry doctorate as the thing they would pay extra for. Two of eight environmental associate files we closed in New York over three years had to be re-specified because the company had written exactly that second-license requirement onto a legal seat. Those two files ran past the 6-to-12-week envelope. That is the finding that does not flatter the method: we will take a poorly specified environmental brief, and it will be slow.
EPA’s Office of General Counsel, last updated 28 January 2026, employs approximately 185 attorneys at headquarters, organized into ten law offices. The undergraduate transcript is required. Substantive statute experience “may enhance your application but is not necessary.” Permanent hiring for those environmental law offices has, since May 2021, been standardized to January and June USAJobs seasons. The Honors Legal Fellowship — historically a two-year program — was not actively hiring as of that January 2026 update. A company that hoped to hire off the 2026 Honors overflow is hiring off a gate that did not open.
EPA’s Legal Careers page, last updated 3 December 2025, puts attorneys in OGC, the Inspector General, ten Offices of Regional Counsel, OECA, the Administrative Law Judges Division, the Environmental Appeals Board, and program offices. Unlike almost all other EPA jobs, attorney announcements need not be published on USAJobs.gov — except that every Office of Regional Counsel attorney position will be. Region 5 covers Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. A general counsel hiring a former Regional Counsel lawyer is hiring a multi-statute caseload, not a single-statute specialist. OECA, last updated 11 August 2026, holds civil judicial and administrative enforcement, the Criminal Investigation Division, and the Office of Site Remediation Enforcement. Most of that FTE is inspectors and special agents. The lawyer seats sit in Legal Counsel Division, civil-enforcement, and Superfund enforcement, not in the inspector count.
A deputy general counsel at a PE-backed specialty-chemicals platform told us they had priced the seat off the BLS median and then watched the preferred candidate take a firm Environment offer on the 2026 grid. The company did not have a second-license problem. It had a product problem. The BLS May 2024 median of $151,160 describes all lawyers. The candidate was sitting on a matching-firm first-year of $235,000.
A general counsel who budgets the all-lawyer median is buying a different product.
Four desks write the check. Only one of them is a lockstep firm.
Chambers USA 2026 maps the firm-side Environment table. The in-house buyer is a deputy general counsel or a chief environment officer, not a standalone GC seat.
Firm Environment gridPublic-interest docket
- Firm Environment Am Law regulatory and litigation groups in D.C.; boutique-heavy Band 1 in New York; a separate Mainly Transactional table for lockstep firms.
- In-house EHS Environmental-and-regulatory counsel under a deputy general counsel or chief environment officer at energy, chemical, utility, manufacturing, and semiconductor companies.
- Public bodies EPA OGC and ten Offices of Regional Counsel; DOJ ENRD; Interior Solicitor; state AG environmental bureaus.
- Public interest Litigating nonprofits on public-service bands. Earthjustice is the measured national example, not a U.S. headcount.
The New York Environment table is not the D.C. Environment table, and neither is a headcount.
Chambers USA Guide 2026 ranks D.C. Environment Band 1 as Arnold & Porter, Beveridge & Diamond, Hogan Lovells Cadwalader, Hunton Andrews Kurth, and Sidley Austin — each with 23 years ranked. Band 2 includes Baker Botts, Bracewell, Crowell & Moring, Gibson Dunn, King & Spalding, and Latham & Watkins. That is a directory of practices a general counsel already knows as outside counsel, not a hiring census.
New York Band 1 on the traditional Environment table is boutique-heavy: Beveridge & Diamond (15 years), Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (23 years), and Sive Paget & Riesel (23 years). Lockstep names appear on a separate “Environment: Mainly Transactional — New York” table, where Davis Polk and Latham are listed Band 1 on their department pages. A head of legal buying New York environmental work is often buying a boutique for the enforcement file and a lockstep firm for the deal diligence. Those are two cash products on two Chambers tables.
Hunton’s Environmental page, accessed 11 September 2026, describes a dedicated team of approximately 40 environmental lawyers in California, Texas, and Washington, DC, covering enforcement defense, new-regulation counseling, permitting, and due diligence for chemicals, waste, energy, transportation, manufacturing, semiconductor, steel, industrial gas, petroleum, and mineral extraction. Gibson Dunn’s Environmental Litigation and Mass Tort page lists toxic tort, class and mass actions, DOJ/EPA enforcement defense, climate/CAA, CERCLA cost recovery, and CEQA/NEPA — and names the in-house industries that pay that firm: oil and gas, auto and manufacturing, defense, pulp and paper, aviation, pharmaceutical, electronics, land development, lending, and retailing. Those industries are the in-house buyers on the other tab.
Environmental work sits as a specialty under an in-house title. ACC prices the title, not the specialty.
The Association of Corporate Counsel / Empsight 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey, fielded 6 May to 27 June 2025 among 1,632 U.S. respondents, prices Attorney, Senior Attorney, Expert Attorney, Managing Attorney, Associate General Counsel, Deputy General Counsel, and two General Counsel rungs. A chief legal officer hiring environmental counsel is almost never hiring a “General Counsel, Environmental.” The seat reports to a deputy GC or sits as Expert Attorney / Associate General Counsel on an EHS or environmental-and-regulatory brief.
On that 1 March 2025 effective date, Senior Attorney median base was $201,000 with $228,000 total cash; Expert Attorney $227,000 / $260,000; Managing Attorney $239,000 / $283,000; Deputy General Counsel $280,000 / $368,000. CLO/GC long-term-incentive eligibility was 63 percent, with median total target direct compensation of $503,000. CLOs at companies with revenue greater than $5 billion made 44 percent more in base and 173 percent more in total target compensation than CLOs at organizations under $1 billion. An Attorney with prior law-firm experience carried a median base 16 percent higher and total cash 18 percent higher. That premium is the in-house buyer paying extra for the firm-side ticket — which is exactly the ticket a lockstep Environment associate is holding.
A chief legal officer at a mid-cap electric utility told us the PFAS file they had posted as a Senior Attorney seat was an Associate General Counsel file once they put the ACC rungs next to the docket. The title moved. The statute did not. In-house environmental counsel salary, as a googled phrase, is the wrong unit. The unit is the title the docket actually occupies.
Public-body desks are a third cash product, not a footnote. The Department of the Interior’s Office of the Solicitor employs more than four hundred licensed attorneys; the Division of Parks and Wildlife holds National Parks, Fish and Wildlife (ESA, MBTA), and Environmental Restoration (OPA, CERCLA, CWA, CAA, Federal Power Act, NEPA natural-resource damages) branches. New York’s Attorney General Environmental Protection Bureau staffs some 40 lawyers and 10 scientists. California’s Department of Justice Environment & Public Health desk holds CEQA, Proposition 65, and counsel to CalEPA and the California Air Resources Board. Earthjustice reports 200+ full-time lawyers across 16 offices and posted a Seattle associate range of $108,200 to $134,800 for a three-year term starting January 2027. None of those counts is a U.S. total of environmental attorneys. BLS has no such SOC, and this page will not invent one.
The files still moved after Honors went dark.
Three stacked shocks rewrote the 2026 environmental docket: Chevron came out, NEPA narrowed, and PFAS/Superfund cash kept flowing while federal entry seats froze.
Deference removedCapital still in motion
- APA, de novo Loper Bright, 28 June 2024, took Chevron out from under every EPA construction of CAA, CWA, RCRA, CERCLA, and SDWA.
- NEPA, project-at-issue Seven County, 29 May 2025, plus CEQ’s binding NEPA regulations removed. The fight moved to agency procedures and FRA deadlines.
- PFAS and Superfund, locked PFOA/PFOS remain CERCLA hazardous substances after 18 August 2026. Drinking-water MCLs and Superfund tax receipts did not freeze with Honors.
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, decided 28 June 2024, held that courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous. The underlying dispute was a National Marine Fisheries Service observer-cost rule. The holding is APA-wide. A general counsel with a live EPA rule challenge is now buying de novo statutory argument, which is mid-to-senior APA/appellate at a firm Environment group or inside DOJ’s Environmental Defense Section — not a junior Honors seat.
Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, decided 29 May 2025, told NEPA courts to give agencies substantial judicial deference and to focus on the project at issue — an 88-mile Uinta Basin railroad — rather than upstream drilling or downstream refining. Executive Order 14154 of 20 January 2025 directed CEQ to propose rescinding 40 C.F.R. parts 1500 et seq. CEQ’s interim final rule of 25 February 2025 removed those regulations, adopted as final on 8 January 2026. Fewer EIS pages on upstream and downstream effects does not mean fewer lawyers. It moves the fight onto whether each agency’s own procedures survive and whether Fiscal Responsibility Act deadlines hold. The National Association of Environmental Professionals counted 221 EISs in calendar 2024, from EPA’s Notices of Availability, after removing adoptions and a duplicate.
Clean Water Act “waters of the United States” remains split by state after Sackett v. EPA (25 May 2023). EPA implements the January 2023 rule as amended in 24 states, D.C., and the territories, and the pre-2015 regime consistent with Sackett in the other 26. A 20 November 2025 proposed rewrite drew more than 220,000 comments; a supplemental NPRM was announced 4 September 2026 with no final rule as of that date. That two-regime map is a state-specific ticket for in-house energy, development, and agriculture counsel. It is not a reason to mint a national environmental wage.
PFOA and PFOS were designated CERCLA hazardous substances effective 8 July 2024. The D.C. Circuit denied the petitions in Chamber of Commerce v. EPA on 18 August 2026. The 2024 drinking-water MCLs keep PFOA/PFOS at 4.0 ppt; on 18 May 2026 EPA proposed to let systems request two more years, to 2031, and to rescind MCLs for PFHxS, PFNA, HFPO-DA, and the Hazard Index mixture. 3M’s public-water-supplier class settlement, finally approved 29 March 2024 in the District of South Carolina, carries a $10.3 billion pre-tax present-value accrual and a $12.5 billion nominal cap. DOJ lodged a proposed $125 million consent decree on 10 September 2026 for work at the Diamond Alkali Superfund site on the lower Passaic. Energy-transition hiring — climate-counsel demand as a growth practice — belongs to whether energy-transition law is hiring in 2026. This page records only the NEPA, CAA, and Superfund consequences that change what an environmental attorney is paid to hold.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, on 31 August 2026, held New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act preempted in West Virginia v. James. DOJ described the statute as seeking $75 billion from domestic and foreign energy companies; that is the program the court blocked, not cash collected. A New York general counsel on the energy side of that statute is buying preemption and foreign-affairs argument, not a Superfund settlement team. The New York Attorney General Environmental Protection Bureau sits on the other side of the same file.
A company prices the docket. A candidate prices the grid.
Of 33 closed New York associate searches over three years, eight were environmental or environmental-adjacent. Five of those eight were in-house EHS desks. Three were law-firm Environment seats.
Over the trailing three years we closed 33 New York associate searches, with a 93 percent completion rate and a typical timeline of 6 to 12 weeks. Sartori’s New York associate mandate telemetry records a 37 percent counter-offer incidence across those 33 files, and a median of 11 working days from offer to signature. Eight of the 33 were environmental or environmental-adjacent — enforcement defense, Superfund/CERCLA, or CWA/CAA counseling. Five of those eight were in-house EHS or environmental-and-regulatory desks at energy, chemical, or manufacturing companies. Three were law-firm Environment associate seats. Five of the eight opened with a company budget at or below the May 2024 BLS all-lawyer median. That is the pricing error this page exists to stop.
Of 47 of those 86 environmental hiring managers in the same cohort, over the same 24-month window, the in-house buyers said they would not match a lockstep counter-offer dollar-for-dollar on an EHS seat. They will pay the ACC title. They will not re-create the Milbank grid inside a chemicals company. A candidate who expects the grid to travel in-house is reading the wrong column of the table. A general counsel who expects the BLS median to hold a lockstep associate is reading the wrong row.
Read the table the way the check is written. A chief legal officer filling a Superfund or PFAS desk inside the company is buying an ACC title — usually Senior Attorney through Associate General Counsel once the docket is honest — and should expect a firm-alumni candidate to arrive with the ACC premium already in their ask. A head of legal who only needs episodic CWA 404 work, a one-off EIS, or a rulemaking comment can keep that on a firm Environment panel and not open a seat. A candidate sitting on a matching-firm grid who is looking at EPA or DOJ is looking at GS-13 to GS-15 cash that tops out below the first-year lockstep. Those three conversations use the same specialty word and three different instruments. The New York associate desk has run that split for more than 10 years; the eight environmental files inside the 33 closed searches are where it shows up in the telemetry.
- Chemicals platform, Superfund letter. A PE-backed specialty-chemicals company in the New York metro opened an environmental-and-regulatory counsel seat after a notice letter. The general counsel had budgeted near the all-lawyer median. The shortlist sat on or next to the 2026 lockstep grid. The brief was rewritten to Expert Attorney / Associate General Counsel cash. Offer to signature took 11 working days after a firm-side counter-offer. Time-to-fill sat at 12 weeks, the slow end of the envelope.
- Utility PFAS file, title moved. A mid-cap electric utility posted a Senior Attorney EHS seat against a PFAS drinking-water and CERCLA file. Once the ACC rungs sat next to the docket, the company retitled it Associate General Counsel. The seat filled inside 8 weeks. The company kept its firm Environment panel for the mass-tort overlay.
- Firm CWA seat, WOTUS map. An Am Law 100 Environment group in Washington hired a third-to-fifth-year associate for CWA 404/401 counseling across the 24/26-state WOTUS split. No second-license screen. Closed in 7 weeks, inside the envelope. The candidate had been looking at GS-12/13 Regional Counsel cash and took the grid.
DOJ ENRD’s FY 2026 enacted ceiling is $90.0 million, 389 positions, and 260 attorneys, against $116.2 million enacted in FY 2025. The Environmental Enforcement Section holds nearly one-half of the Division’s lawyers. A May 2026 trial-attorney vacancy in that section (GS-12 through GS-15, Washington and Denver) published the DCB bands: GS-12 $102,415–$133,142; GS-13 $121,785–$158,322; GS-14 $143,913–$187,093; GS-15 $169,279–$197,200. Preferred experience was two to seven years post-J.D. That is a lateral government seat, not an Honors seat. The Attorney General’s Honors Program 2026 cycle ran 28 August to 8 September 2026 with more than 180 openings department-wide; starting GS is GS-11 step 1 off a J.D., GS-12 after a one-year clerkship, GS-13 after two to three years of combined clerkships. Permanent private-firm employment does not preserve eligibility. The Class of 2025 already showed what a freeze does to that gate.
| Statute | Firm Environment | In-house EHS | Public body |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clean Air Act | Enforcement defense; GHG and NSPS counseling | Utility, fuels, and manufacturing EHS desks | EPA Air and Radiation Law Office; DOJ EES / EDS |
| Clean Water Act / WOTUS | 404/401 permitting; two-regime state map | Energy, development, agriculture general counsel | EPA Water Law Office; Army Corps; DOJ EES |
| CERCLA / Superfund / PFAS | Cost recovery, contribution, NRD | Chemical, manufacturing, airport, DoD-contractor desks | EPA OSRE / OGC Solid Waste; DOJ EES; Interior NRD |
| NEPA / FRA deadlines | Project-siting and challenge litigation | Energy and infrastructure general counsel | DOJ Natural Resources Section; CEQ guidance only |
| SDWA PFAS MCLs | Rule comment and utility counseling | Water-system and state-primacy counsel | EPA Office of Water; state primacy agencies |
The published figures leave three holes a general counsel still has to walk around.
No environmental SOC. No environmental-practice associate scale. No ACC specialty dollar. The 2026 number is assembled, not looked up.
The Occupational Outlook Handbook recap of May 2024 OEWS data puts 864,800 lawyer jobs in 2024, projects +4 percent / +35,900 jobs from 2024 to 2034, and about 31,500 openings a year. Industry medians in that same recap: federal government $174,680; legal services $143,470; local government $125,180; state government $111,280. Legal services hold 51 percent of employment; self-employed 12 percent; local government 8 percent; state government 6 percent; federal government 5 percent. The 10th percentile is below $72,780; the 90th is above $239,200. None of those rows is environmental.
NALP’s Class of 2025 selected findings, published 5 August 2026, put the national median starting salary at $100,000, up 5.3 percent from the Class of 2024, with a mean of $128,412. Private-practice median fell 3.1 percent to $155,000. Government median rose 1.4 percent to $81,000; public interest rose 4.2 percent to $75,000. Overall employment was 92.8 percent. Government jobs fell 14.6 percent, nearly 670 fewer. Federal government jobs excluding clerkships fell from nearly 1,100 to approximately 690. Public-interest jobs fell to 2,945, a 13.9 percent drop, more than 475 fewer. EPA’s enacted workforce went from 15,130 in FY 2024 to 14,130 in FY 2025 to 12,312 in FY 2026, with $8.817 billion enacted for FY 2026 against a President’s Budget that had requested $4.16 billion. OECA FTE in the FY 2026 President’s Budget sits at 1,427.2 against 1,760.9 enacted in FY 2025. The respondent-side docket — 2,127 civil conclusions, more than $652 million in penalties, more than $6.4 billion in injunctive relief, 156 criminal defendants, 1,343 final NPL sites as of 13 March 2026 — did not contract with the FTE.
The New York mapping book covers roughly 67,000 lawyers. Practice tags collide across Environment, Energy, and Litigation, so this page does not publish an environmental-attorney headcount from that map. Sartori’s quarterly survey since 2019 has never produced a published environmental-practice premium, which is why the table above refuses to mint one. The SEC’s 2024 climate-disclosure rules were stayed, then proposed for rescission on 29 May 2026 (91 FR 33296, 3 June 2026); they are not a 2026 hiring driver for this specialty. In-house climate-disclosure build-out, if it still exists, is a state or voluntary problem and is not priced here.
NALP’s 2023 public-service survey, as of 1 October 2023, put public-interest organizations at $69,499 median for lawyers with one year or less, $81,000 at five years, $107,085 at 11 to 15 years, and $121,530 at more than 15 years, from 129 organizations. NALP’s own comparison in that release: the 2023 median first-year at firms of more than 1,000 lawyers was $215,000, approximately double the median for public-service lawyers with more than 15 years. A candidate choosing the Earthjustice Seattle band of $108,200 to $134,800 against a lockstep first-year of $235,000 is making that trade in the open. A general counsel hiring off that band is not.
If the seat is an in-house title rather than a firm associate, the 2026 in-house counsel salary benchmark and the private-practice versus in-house salary guide hold the title ladder this page only borrows. This page holds the environmental ticket those ladders do not isolate.
Questions a general counsel and a candidate both ask about 2026 pay
What is environmental attorney salary in the United States in 2026?
There is no single 2026 figure: lockstep first-years sit at $235,000 as of 1 July 2026, while the BLS all-lawyer median was $151,160 in May 2024. The Occupational Outlook Handbook, accessed 11 September 2026, does not publish an environmental SOC. NALP’s 1 January 2025 associate survey isolated intellectual property and did not isolate environmental. A general counsel who googles one number is mixing four products: the firm grid, in-house titles, GS-905 locality cash, and public-interest bands. This page tables those products. It does not mint a specialty premium the surveys declined to print.
How much does an in-house environmental lawyer earn versus a law-firm associate?
On the ACC 2025 ladder, effective 1 March 2025, an Attorney median base is $148,000 and an Associate General Counsel median base is $245,000 — against a $235,000 lockstep first-year as of 1 July 2026. Environmental is listed among ACC specialties; the public executive summary does not publish a dollar for it. The in-house buyer pays a title, not a practice label. A deputy general counsel who needs CERCLA or PFAS fluency is usually buying Senior Attorney through Associate General Counsel cash, plus the 16 percent median base premium ACC recorded for Attorneys with prior law-firm experience.
What does a federal GS-905 environmental attorney earn in 2026?
In the January 2026 Washington-Baltimore-Arlington table, GS-13 runs $121,785 to $158,322 and GS-15 is capped at $197,200. Those are OPM locality rates for the attorney series, not EPA- or DOJ-specific special rates. The Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division posted the same DCB bands on a May 2026 Environmental Enforcement Section trial-attorney vacancy. The GS-15 cap sits below the 2026 lockstep first-year. A chief legal officer hiring a former EPA lawyer is not matching government cash; they are replacing it.
Is there a published environmental-practice salary premium in 2026?
No public 2026 survey prices an environmental premium: NALP isolated intellectual property at a $225,000 first-year median as of 1 January 2025 and did not isolate environmental. ACC listed Environmental among specialties and printed no specialty dollar. BLS has no environmental-attorney SOC. Treat any “average environmental lawyer salary” scraped from a job board as unsourced. The ticket that 2026 pay actually prices is a JD plus a live statute docket.
Should a general counsel hire environmental counsel in-house or keep the work at a firm?
Bring the seat in when a named officer must sign Superfund, PFAS, or permit decisions; keep episodic counseling on a firm Environment panel. EPA recorded 2,127 civil enforcement conclusions in fiscal 2025 and $714.3 million in new Superfund commitments. That docket does not pause because Honors hiring froze. A head of legal who lives inside CAA, CWA, CERCLA, or SDWA files needs an employee who can see the facts before the signature. Project-siting spikes and one-off EISs still rent well.
Why did government environmental hiring freeze while Superfund cash still moved?
Federal government jobs excluding clerkships fell 37.0 percent for the Class of 2025, and Honors Program jobs fell from 317 to 50, per NALP’s 5 August 2026 selected findings. EPA’s Office of General Counsel said on 28 January 2026 that its Honors Legal Fellowship was not actively hiring. The respondent-side docket did not freeze with it: PFOA and PFOS remain CERCLA hazardous substances after the D.C. Circuit’s 18 August 2026 affirmance, and 3M’s public-water settlement still carries a $10.3 billion present-value accrual.
OPM tables, NALP surveys, EPA and DOJ dockets, and the Milbank grid.
Wage figures come from BLS, OPM, NALP, ACC, the Milbank memorandum, and one public-interest employer posting. Docket figures come from EPA, DOJ, the Supreme Court, and the Federal Register.
Wage tables, dockets and the instruments that set 2026 cash
43 references- Sartori & Partners — New York Legal Talent Research Programme (1675 structured interviews; ~67,000 lawyers mapped; quarterly surveys since 2019; mandate telemetry) sartoriglobal.com ↗
- Lawyers : Occupational Outlook Handbook : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics bls.gov ↗
- MEMORANDUM TO ASSOCIATES (Milbank, 2 June 2026) abovethelaw.com ↗
- Associate Compensation Scorecard: The 2026 Summer Of Salary Increases abovethelaw.com ↗
- Cravath May Be Waiting Until Year-End Bonus Season To Make Its Biglaw Pay Move abovethelaw.com ↗
- Despite Expectations, $225,000 Entry Associate Salaries Lag at Large Law Firms (NALP, 28 May 2025) nalp.org ↗
- Class of 2024 National Summary Report (NALP) nalp.org ↗
- Employment for the Class of 2025 Jobs & JDs Selected Findings (NALP, 5 August 2026) nalp.org ↗
- NALP's Public Service Attorney Salary Survey Shows Pay Remains Lowest at Civil Legal Services Organizations nalp.org ↗
- Salary Table 2026-DCB (OPM) opm.gov ↗
- Salary Table 2026-NY (OPM) opm.gov ↗
- 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey Executive Summary (ACC / Empsight) acc.com ↗
- Attorney Positions and Fellowships in EPA's Office of General Counsel (OGC) epa.gov ↗
- Legal Careers at EPA epa.gov ↗
- Honors Attorney Fellowships in the EPA Region 5 Office of Regional Counsel epa.gov ↗
- EPA Budget by National Program Manager and Major Office (FY 2026 CJ addendum) epa.gov ↗
- EPA's Budget and Spending epa.gov ↗
- Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Annual Results for Fiscal Year 2025 (PDF) epa.gov ↗
- Current NPL Updates: New Proposed NPL Sites and New NPL Sites epa.gov ↗
- GENERAL LEGAL ACTIVITIES Environment & Natural Resources Division FY 2027 Budget Request at a Glance justice.gov ↗
- Learn More about the Division (DOJ ENRD, updated 3 September 2026) justice.gov ↗
- Trial Attorney | Environmental Enforcement Section (Job ID ENRD-26-030-EXC) justice.gov ↗
- Attorney Salaries, Promotions, and Benefits (DOJ) justice.gov ↗
- 22-451 Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (28 June 2024) supremecourt.gov ↗
- 23-975 Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County (29 May 2025) supremecourt.gov ↗
- CEQ final rule adopting the interim final rule removing NEPA regulations (8 January 2026) govinfo.gov ↗
- Designation of PFOA and PFOS as CERCLA Hazardous Substances; Final Rule govinfo.gov ↗
- Chamber of Commerce v. EPA (D.C. Cir. 18 August 2026) media.cadc.uscourts.gov ↗
- Definition of Waters of the United States: Rule Status and Litigation Update epa.gov ↗
- EPA and Army Seek Additional Input on Proposed Waters of the U.S. Definition (4 September 2026) epa.gov ↗
- New York Judge Blocks State of New York's Unconstitutional Climate Superfund Act (DOJ OPA, 31 August 2026) justice.gov ↗
- 3M Settlement with Public Water Suppliers to Address PFAS in Drinking Water Receives Final Court Approval news.3m.com ↗
- Proposed $125M Settlement Agreement Provides Critical Work for Advancing the Lower Passaic River Superfund Cleanup justice.gov ↗
- 2024 ANNUAL NEPA REPORT (National Association of Environmental Professionals) naep.memberclicks.net ↗
- About - Earthjustice earthjustice.org ↗
- Associate Attorney, Northwest Regional Office (Earthjustice) jobs.jobvite.com ↗
- Office of the Solicitor | U.S. Department of the Interior doi.gov ↗
- Social Justice Division | New York Attorney General (Environmental Protection Bureau) ag.ny.gov ↗
- Environment, District of Columbia, USA | Chambers Rankings chambers.com ↗
- Environment, New York, USA | Chambers Rankings chambers.com ↗
- Environmental | Hunton hunton.com ↗
- Superfund chemical excise taxes (IRS) irs.gov ↗
- SEC proposed rescission of climate disclosure rules (91 FR 33296) govinfo.gov ↗
BLS, NALP associate, NALP graduate, and ACC dollars are all-specialty unless a row says otherwise. NALP did not isolate environmental; ACC listed Environmental and did not price it. EPA OGC 317.2 FTE is a ceiling including non-attorneys; the lawyer count used in prose is OGC's approximately 185 attorneys. DOJ ENRD 260 attorneys is the FY 2026 enacted ceiling, not the division homepage dashboard. The $75 billion New York Climate Change Superfund figure is the statutory program a court blocked on 31 August 2026, not collected cash. 3M's $10.3 billion figure is a class-settlement present-value accrual, not attorney fees.
Sartori & Partners runs a continuous research program over nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles mapped globally, with quarterly market surveys since 2019. The New York findings on this page come from that program’s city book and from the associate-line mandate telemetry cited above.
Adjacent salary and hiring pages.
In-house counsel salary 2026
The ACC title ladder a general counsel actually uses to price a corporate legal seat, including the rungs environmental work sits under.
Open the in-house benchmark SalaryBigLaw associate salary scale 2026
The Milbank class-year grid environmental associates at matching firms are paid on — firm-wide, not a practice premium.
Open the 2026 lockstep scale MarketIs energy-transition law hiring in 2026?
Climate-counsel demand as a hiring question. This salary page does not restate that thesis; it prices the environmental docket that remains.
Open the hiring questionPrice the seat before you post it
Put the environmental docket on the right cash product.
If you are a general counsel, chief legal officer, or head of HR filling an EHS or environmental-and-regulatory seat, we map the four products, screen for the statute docket, and price the offer against the grid the candidates actually sit on.