Lawyer salary in Kansas 2026: the Wichita table and the open cell

WageDex, compiling the May 2025 BLS OEWS file for the Wichita KS MSA, puts lawyers (SOC 23-1011) at a median of $121,510 ($58.42 an hour), a 10th percentile of $76,380, a 25th of $88,150, a 75th of $151,140 and a 90th of $209,200, on employment of about 690. Half of Wichita wage-and-salary lawyers sit between $88,150 and $151,140. CareerOneStop, a U.S. Department of Labor wage tool, republishes the same 2025 column. Those are establishment-location wages, not residence wages, and they exclude most self-employed lawyers and unincorporated partners. Lawyer salary Wichita, on the instrument a general counsel can actually defend, is that interquartile — not a class-year ladder imported from the coasts.

The statewide row sits under it. The same May 2025 vintage puts Kansas lawyers at a median of $106,650 ($51.28 an hour), a mean of $130,530, and employment of about 4,190, with a 10th of $76,300, a 25th of $83,810, a 75th of $159,310 and a 90th of $213,360. Kansas ranks 43rd of 53 states and territories on the median — 33 percent below the national median of $159,670 in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, last modified 27 August 2026. The state number is not a Wichita discount. CareerOneStop’s 2025 column puts the Kansas balance of state at a median of $77,260 (10th $60,100; 90th $125,410). That nonmetro cell is what pulls the statewide median below the Wichita row.

Other Kansas seats, same vintage, same SOC: Topeka MSA median $102,500 (10th $76,480; 90th $164,170); Lawrence MSA median $103,070 (10th $76,120; 90th $196,780); Manhattan MSA median $124,230 on about 120 jobs. Manhattan’s median sits slightly above Wichita’s on a small base; do not build an offer from 120 covered jobs. The neighboring bi-state Kansas City MO-KS MSA, named here only as a contrast, shows a lawyer median of $134,640 on about 5,310 covered jobs in the same May 2025 file. That 5,310 figure includes nine Missouri counties. It is not a Kansas headcount, and this page does not treat it as one. Company-side hiring in that metro is briefed on in-house legal recruiters in Kansas City.

Three measured facts sit under that claim, and they do not need a recruiter blog to hold. First, the public band. The Attorney General’s $86,000 floor sits $2,150 under the Wichita 25th percentile of $88,150. The $130,000 AAG ceiling clears the Wichita median of $121,510 by $8,490 and still sits inside the metro interquartile. A lawyer already earning the Wichita median in private practice or in-house is being asked to move to Topeka, or to a Wichita federal embed, for a band that only wins at the top of the range. Second, the pipeline. KU Law’s Class of 2024 private-practice starting median of $90,000 is $1,850 above the Wichita 25th and $31,510 under the metro median. The public-sector starting median of $70,000 sits under the Wichita 10th of $76,380. Third, the occupational mix. The 4 August 2026 BLS Mountain-Plains release puts Wichita legal occupations (major group 23-0000, not lawyers alone) at 0.5 percent of local employment against 0.8 percent nationally, with a legal-group mean hourly wage of $44.15 against $67.07 nationally. Production is 10.8 percent of Wichita employment against 5.5 percent nationally, including 9,460 aircraft structure, surfaces, rigging and systems assembler jobs at a location quotient of 140.11. This is a production metro with a thin legal desk. The desk that exists is priced. The requisition that ignores the price stays open.

Payroll capacity is not evenly distributed inside the state, which is why the same occupational title does not pay the same in Sedgwick County and Johnson County. BLS County Employment and Wages for the first quarter of 2026, released 4 September 2026, put Kansas covered employment at 1,425,300 in March 2026 and the statewide average weekly wage at $1,286 (41st among states, up 3.1 percent). Johnson County: 370,600 jobs, weekly wage $1,647. Sedgwick County: 267,100 jobs, weekly wage $1,286. Shawnee: 101,700 jobs, $1,292. Wyandotte: 92,000 jobs, $1,367. The U.S. weekly wage in that release is $1,654. Johnson County’s weekly wage is at the national figure; Sedgwick’s matches the Kansas average. A head of HR who copies an Overland Park EPC band onto a Wichita OEM requisition is copying a different county’s payroll. A head of HR who copies a Topeka AAG band onto a Wichita in-house requisition is copying a public cell that already cannot fill.

The labor-market backdrop does not rescue a mispriced legal seat. BLS Economy at a Glance, extracted 11 September 2026, puts Kansas unemployment at 3.8 percent in July 2026 (preliminary), civilian employment at about 1,497,300, and total nonfarm at 1,470,500, up 0.4 percent year over year. Manufacturing employment 173,300; professional and business services 173,600; government 257,400. Kansas GDP, all-industry total, was $241,378.4 million in 2025 on BEA series KSNGSP, updated 9 April 2026, against $230,522.1 million in 2024. Capital is present. The legal occupation is a thin slice of it. A signing bonus on a band that starts at $86,000 does not purchase a lawyer already sitting at $121,510.

Senate Bill 98, enrolled in the 2025 session and signed by the governor on 24 April 2025, is a sales-tax exemption for construction or remodeling of a qualified data center and for data-center equipment, eligible costs and certain labor. The Sales Tax Institute, on 12 September 2025, restates the enacted terms: a 20-year exemption on qualifying purchases; $250 million of investment within five years; 20 jobs within two years of operations; a water-conservation commitment; a 10-year electricity purchase from the public utility in the service territory; Kansas Department of Commerce oversight with five-year reviews. The 20-job floor is not a lawyer-job floor. Data-center campuses hire few attorneys on site. The legal work is at the hyperscale operator’s Johnson County desk and at Kansas firms handling annexation, conditional use, tax-increment financing and development agreements. De Soto has been weighing tax-increment financing for a second large campus, with phase-one ground-breaking discussed for 2027 pending approvals. That is a 2026 hearing calendar, not a 2026 headcount.

The Kansas Corporation Commission, on 6 November 2025, approved a settlement among Evergy’s Kansas utilities, the Data Center Coalition, Sierra Club, NRDC, Google and others on a large-load power-service rate plan for new facilities over 75 MW. Utility Dive, 10 November 2025, reports Evergy’s mid-February 2025 application cited more than 20 potential large-load data-center and manufacturing customers totaling more than 6 GW of Kansas demand. The rate plan allows up to five years of ramp, then at least 12 years of service, with a minimum monthly bill at 80 percent of contract demand and the customer paying needed transmission upgrades. Axios Kansas City, 13 November 2025, describes 12-to-17-year energy contracts with steep early-termination fees. KCC staff, as reported, put large-load customers 7 to 10 percent above existing industrial customers on a $200 million annual power bill — the cross-subsidy the order is designed to avoid. That work sits at Evergy, at the KCC in Topeka, at Overland Park EPC in-house, and at Kansas firms that practice public utilities. It is five-to-ten-year regulatory and commercial counsel, live through 2026–28 as projects clear local siting. Evergy’s broader bi-state pipeline figure includes the neighboring state; this page does not dump that figure onto Kansas.

The Boeing–Spirit close of 8 December 2025 is the Wichita capital event. Year one of integration is 2026: supply-chain contracting, employment (union, benefits, any WARN analysis), government-contracts continuity where defense work remains with an independent supplier, quality and regulatory, real estate. The corresponding M&A, aviation, products and employment work lands at Wichita relationship firms. Seniority on the company side is senior counsel or AGC for integration; mid-level commercial for supply-chain. The occupational table, collected in May 2025, does not yet include whatever that integration did to Wichita legal headcount. Price the 2026 hire on the 2025 table plus the work, not on a guessed OEM legal census.

Two 2026 events look like demand and are not standing GC seats. Voters defeated a constitutional amendment to elect Supreme Court justices on 4 August 2026, 61.36 percent no (382,118) against 38.64 percent yes (240,603). That campaign produced a burst of election-law and campaign-finance work. Defeat preserves the 1958 merit-selection system; it does not create a Wichita in-house cell. Order 2025-RL-150 eases lateral in-house moves from NextGen-first states into Overland Park and Wichita in 2026–28. It is a talent gate. It does not add seats.