Salary · Missouri
The 2026 Missouri figure that is not a St. Louis offer.
St. Louis employed lawyers posted a $142,690 median in May 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics wages. The statewide median was $133,450. Neither number is the matching-firm floor a general counsel is bidding against.
The state median is a blend, not the offer.
Missouri employed lawyers posted a median of $133,450 in the Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 wage estimates, published through O*NET. That dated number is not the 2026 lawyer salary a St. Louis or Springfield company should print.
Sartori maps 67,000 lawyers in New York. That is a coverage file for the associate desk this state page uses, not a Missouri wage survey. The global map behind it holds 1,480,000+ lawyer profiles. The question belongs to two readers at once: the general counsel who has to put a lawyer on a Missouri payroll, and the lawyer who will earn the 2026 figure. The opening fact is the same for both. The posted salary that misses is the one that treats five different objects as one Missouri number.
| Layer | Figure | As of | What it measures |
|---|---|---|---|
| Missouri statewide median | $133,450 | May 2025 | All employed lawyers, SOC 23-1011 — firm, in-house, government |
| St. Louis, MO-IL median | $142,690 | May 2025 | Employed lawyers in the bi-state St. Louis MSA, same survey |
| Kansas City, MO-KS median | $134,640 | May 2025 | Employed lawyers in the bi-state Kansas City MSA, same survey |
| Springfield, MO median | $103,790 | May 2025 | Employed lawyers in the Springfield wage area, same survey |
| Matching-firm first-year base | $235,000 | 1 July 2026 | National lockstep at offices that matched Milbank; not a census of Missouri offices |
The matching-firm first-year base of $235,000 sits 76 percent above that Missouri employed-lawyer median of $133,450. A general counsel who treats the median as the offer is pricing the occupation file. They are not pricing the metro the candidate actually works in, and they are not pricing a class-year lockstep. O*NET’s United States median on that same table is $159,670. WageDex’s 10 August 2026 compilation of that release puts the Missouri median 16 percent below it. St. Louis does not close that gap.
Kansas City, MO-KS sits $1,190 above the Missouri median on the May 2025 O*NET table. A posting that says “Missouri market” and prints $133,450 is printing a number $1,190 from the Kansas City median. The blend is not St. Louis.
Four lenses on one failure: the posted 2026 salary misses when it uses the state blend for a metro the blend does not describe. Every public figure is cited below.
- 11,560
- Wage-and-salary lawyer jobs in Missouri in the May 2025 OEWS, SOC 23-1011.
- WageDex compilation of BLS OEWS, 10 August 2026
- #23
- Missouri's rank among 53 states and territories on the lawyer median in that same release.
- WageDex compilation of BLS OEWS, 10 August 2026
- 4.70%
- Missouri top marginal individual income-tax rate on taxable income above $9,436, as of 1 January 2026.
- Tax Foundation, 17 February 2026
Percentiles, capital, and the cells the median hides.
Before a general counsel sets a 2026 number, the file has to say which published layer the number is answering. Mixing the state median with a nonmetro 10th is how a board packet invents a fifth Missouri salary.
The opening table is medians for four geographies plus the national lockstep. It does not show the tails. O*NET's May 2025 Missouri distribution for SOC 23-1011 runs from a 10th percentile of $67,020 through a 25th of $89,900, a 75th of $197,110, and a 90th of $299,990. Those percentiles describe employed lawyers across firm, in-house, and government. They will never equal a first-year lockstep. A head of legal who averages them with the July 2026 print is inventing a number nobody earns. Two further tails sit off that statewide line. Springfield runs from a 10th percentile of $73,700 to a 75th of $164,860, so a Springfield lawyer at the local upper quartile is already above the statewide median. The Jefferson City upper quartile in the table below is not. Springfield's 25th percentile is $84,640, the same dollar as the North Missouri nonmetropolitan median on the bar chart. Kansas City's 90th percentile is $287,200, under the St. Louis 90th on the scale.
Missouri 10th percentile
Employed lawyers, SOC 23-1011, May 2025 — the left tail of the statewide file.
O*NET, BLS 2025 wage data ↗| Wage area | 25th | Median | 75th | Versus state median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Columbia, MO | $79,990 | $107,890 | $161,860 | −$25,560 |
| Jefferson City, MO | $81,520 | $93,320 | $127,200 | −$40,130 |
| Cape Girardeau, MO-IL | $73,370 | $94,600 | $148,550 | −$38,850 |
| Joplin, MO-KS | $73,170 | $96,190 | $156,100 | −$37,260 |
| St. Joseph, MO-KS | $76,420 | $97,370 | $147,950 | −$36,080 |
Jefferson City's 75th percentile, $127,200, still sits under the statewide median. A capital-area lawyer at the local upper quartile has not reached the Missouri middle. Source: O*NET, BLS 2025 wage data.
A state median is not a St. Louis offer.
Who is hiring against this table now.
The 2026 salary is being bid by three desks that do not share a wage area: St. Louis headquarters legal teams, Kansas City company seats on a bi-state file, and capital or southwest Missouri roles whose local median is a different product.
The in-house buyer does not hire “a Missouri lawyer.” The buyer hires into a wage area. A St. Louis company seat is read against the St. Louis, MO-IL row. A Kansas City company seat is read against the bi-state Kansas City row. A Springfield seat, and a Jefferson City or nonmetropolitan seat, is read against the local median on the charts above. Those are three instruments inside one occupation code. They are not a headquarters census, and they are not a printed in-house band a careers page did not publish. Public legal work sits inside the same code. The Jefferson City median is the capital wage area, government lawyers included, and it is not an assistant-attorney-general pay schedule. No such schedule is in the wage file.
Company-side search in Kansas City is briefed on our Kansas City in-house counsel page. The state map of the three metros we cover — St. Louis, Kansas City, and Springfield — is on the Missouri locations page. None of those pages is a wage survey. The wage survey is the table above. The Kansas salary page already treats the Kansas City, MO-KS median as a bi-state contrast and not as a Kansas headcount. This page uses that same O*NET cell as a Missouri row. The Illinois salary page names St. Louis, MO-IL only as a bi-state cell on an Illinois table. The Missouri medians for that row live here.
Local occupation tableNational firm print
- Capital and nonmetro Jefferson City, Columbia, and the nonmetropolitan wage areas. The offer that matches this desk is the local percentile, not a headquarters median.
- Headquarters metro St. Louis and Kansas City company seats. Commercial, regulatory, and labor counsel. The relevant comparable is the MSA row.
- National matching print The candidate who can see a published class-year scale. Useful as a ceiling question. Not a Missouri office census.
A company that benchmarks a St. Louis commercial counsel seat to the capital median is using the wrong geography. A company that benchmarks a Jefferson City regulatory seat to St. Louis is doing the same thing in the other direction. The candidate comparing a silent in-house band with a published national floor does not need that floor to be a St. Louis associate scale for the silence to matter. A Missouri office that has not printed the 2026 lockstep does not get that memo filled in from the national scale.
The firm-side buyer of the same names is a published national scale or a silent local office, and those are not interchangeable. A lawyer who can read $235,000 on a matching-firm memo and cannot read a number on the Missouri requisition will price the silence. The general counsel who answers with the statewide median has answered a different question from the one the candidate asked.
Why a single 2026 Missouri salary does not close.
Three mechanisms, one state: a median that tracks Kansas City, a St. Louis and Springfield gap the median erases, and a national floor that is not a local census.
Local percentilePublished national floor
- State blend One number for every Missouri lawyer. Closest to the Kansas City row. Wrong for St. Louis and wrong for Springfield.
- Metro row The occupation median for the wage area where the seat sits. Still firm, in-house, and government mixed together.
- Matching-firm floor The published national print. The question is whether this candidate can actually walk to an office that has matched.
NALP's 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey, as of 1 January 2025 and published 28 May 2025, put the overall first-year median at $200,000 across 437 offices. The modal figure was $225,000. That survey is the layer between the Missouri occupation median and the July 2026 print. It is participating-firm office data. It is not the O*NET file, and it is not an in-house posting. Milbank's lockstep, effective 1 July 2026, moved the national matching-firm endpoints to $235,000 and $455,000, as compiled by Biglaw Investor. A Missouri general counsel who copies either endpoint onto a Springfield requisition is answering a question the local wage area did not ask.
The interview file is a New York cohort, read against this Missouri table rather than replaced by a second Missouri count. Across 1,675 structured interviews with New York lawyers, general counsel described Midwest commercial requisitions that opened on a statewide median and then lost the first conversation once the candidate put the metro row next to it. The mandate file on that same desk is smaller and separate: 33 closed associate searches over three years. It is not a Missouri placement ledger.
Counter-offer incidence on those 33 searches is 37 percent. Median offer-to-acceptance is 11 working days. That window is short enough that a candidate who can see a published national floor can reopen a conversation a Missouri compensation committee thought it had closed. The typical timeline on the line is 6 to 12 weeks. A Missouri license, when the seat requires one, sits outside that band until the admission clock is in the brief.
Capital cash is a different product.
What the May 2025 wage does not deduct.
The occupation table is gross wage-and-salary pay. Missouri's 2026 income tax changes what that gross means to the person who earns it.
The Tax Foundation's table as of 1 January 2026, in an article dated 17 February 2026, lists Missouri's top marginal rate at 4.70 percent on taxable income above $9,436. Brackets are inflation-adjusted for 2026 under the table's note (bb). The standard deduction is tied to the federal system under note (u): $16,100 for a single filer and $32,200 for a joint filer on that table. Note (b) records that Missouri allows some or all of federal income tax paid to be deducted in computing state taxable income. The same article states that Missouri exempts capital gains from its income tax. Note (a), using 2023 data, puts the average local income tax at 0.18 percent of AGI. None of those rules is inside the OEWS median. A posted $133,450 and a posted $142,690 are gross occupation figures. They are not take-home, and they are not a total-compensation package.
WageDex, compiling the May 2025 OEWS and dated 10 August 2026, is the source for the employment count and the rank on the opening grid. O*NET is the source for the percentiles. The two publishers are describing one Bureau of Labor Statistics release. They are not two surveys. A later OEWS release will move the median. Until it does, the May 2025 table is the dated public file.
License portability with Kansas is a hiring clock, not a wage. The cut-score rule for moving a Missouri score into Kansas is on the Kansas salary page. This page does not restate that rule. What belongs here is the pay consequence: a lawyer who needs a second state admission before a Kansas City seat can start is not on the same clock as a lawyer whose work stays inside one bar. Budget the admission in the first client call.
What the general counsel should print, and what the lawyer should hear.
The Missouri seat still has to be priced on the Missouri row. The files that miss are the ones that import a national floor, or a state blend, into the wrong wage area.
The New York associate desk this state page uses has worked that market for more than ten years. Firm-wide, Sartori & Partners has made 400+ placements since 2017 (230+ in-house). The median time to an accepted offer on that in-house book is 11 weeks. That median is not the New York associate timeline of 6 to 12 weeks, and it is not a promise that every Missouri file lands on it. One composite from the in-house book, described by category only: a St. Louis-headquartered food manufacturer needed its first general counsel. The opening band was framed on the statewide median. The seat closed in 14 weeks, past that 11-week median, after the band was reset to the St. Louis row. Completion on the New York associate line, a different book, is 94 percent on 33 closed searches over three years.
We priced the first general counsel seat off the statewide median and lost the first two conversations once the candidates set that figure next to the St. Louis row.
Your comparable is the wage area where the seat sits, then the question of whether this candidate can walk to a published national floor.
- Name the metro. St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Jefferson City are not one Missouri salary. The opening table is the split.
- Keep the lockstep in its box. Use $235,000 when the person you want can see an office that has matched. Do not use it as the Springfield middle.
- Separate gross from the package. The OEWS figure excludes benefits, overtime premiums, stock, and nonproduction bonuses. The tax table is a 2026 overlay, not a line inside the survey.
- Budget the counter. On the New York associate book the counter-offer rate is the figure in the section above. A Missouri compensation cycle that takes longer than the acceptance window will meet that counter.
- Do not open on the blend. A statewide median pasted into a St. Louis commercial requisition is the miss the interview cohort describes.
Your comparable is the percentile in your wage area, not a national scale your office has not adopted and not a state median that describes a different metro.
- Read the quartile. Jefferson City's upper quartile still sits under the state median. A title change that stays inside the capital cell may not move you to the Missouri middle.
- Price the tax. Missouri taxes wages. The top rate and the capital-gains exemption are different rules. The occupation table is silent on both.
- Ask which bar the seat needs. A Kansas City role that crosses the state line is a second admission clock. The Kansas rule is on the Kansas page, not restated here.
- Watch the floor. The national matching-firm print is public. If your current office has not matched, the same month can contain last year's scale and this year's scale without leaving the profession.
- Sound the market quietly. Our lateral-move decision guide covers how to test a seat without putting the current one at risk.
National in-house cash bands live on the 2026 in-house counsel salary benchmark. The search itself, when the number is ready to print, is a conversation with the in-house counsel recruiting desk. Companies hiring a first legal officer, rather than adding a seat, should start with the first general counsel guide.
What a Missouri lawyer salary headline leaves out.
The state median is the number people quote. It is not the number most of the license roll earns, and it is not the number a southwest nonmetro 10th describes.
The Missouri Bar, in its March 2025 account of the 2025 attorney enrollment, counted 29,117 actively licensed lawyers. Set next to the wage-and-salary count on the opening grid, that is about 2.5 licensed lawyers for every covered job. The same note said 21.4 percent of lawyers listed a primary practice out of state in 2025, compared with 19.98 percent in 2023. OEWS excludes most self-employed lawyers and does not measure partner residual draws as wages. A headline that treats 29,117 as the number of people earning the median has mixed a license roll with a paycheck survey.
The pipeline into that roll is not the lockstep either. A first job in a small Missouri firm and a national matching-firm first-year are different labor markets that can share a bar card. No survey cited here prints a Missouri law-graduate median as a state figure. The national private-practice and class-year anatomy lives on the BigLaw scale page linked above. A 2026 Missouri offer staffed as if every new admittee were walking into the July lockstep is staffing a market the wage file does not show.
The research method behind the New York interview cohort is on our research page. The Missouri map of where we recruit is the locations page already linked. It is a coverage map, not a second wage series, and it is not a count of Missouri mandates.
Lawyer salary in Missouri: questions from both sides of the offer
What is lawyer salary Missouri in 2026?
Lawyer salary Missouri in 2026 starts from the May 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics median of $133,450 for employed lawyers, SOC 23-1011, published through O*NET. St. Louis posted $142,690 on that table and Springfield posted $103,790. The national matching-firm first-year base is $235,000 as of 1 July 2026. Those are different objects. A company that prints one of them as “the Missouri salary” is pricing a blend, a metro, or a lockstep, and only one of those is the seat.
How does St. Louis lawyer pay sit against the statewide median?
St. Louis, MO-IL employed lawyers posted a $142,690 median in the May 2025 OEWS, $9,240 above the Missouri median of $133,450. The metro 25th is $95,300 and the 75th is $208,070. The 75th still sits under the July 2026 matching-firm first-year base of $235,000. A St. Louis requisition framed on the state median is light against the metro middle. It is not a failed lockstep search.
Where do Kansas City and Springfield sit on the same table?
Kansas City, MO-KS posted a $134,640 median, $1,190 above the state figure. Springfield posted $103,790, $29,660 under it. The state median is a Kansas City-shaped blend, not a St. Louis offer and not a Springfield offer. The Kansas salary page owns the Kansas side of that bi-state area. This page owns the Missouri wage row.
Does a Missouri company have to match $235,000 to hire counsel?
Not as a statute, and not as a census of Missouri offices. The $235,000 figure is the national matching-firm first-year base effective 1 July 2026, with an eighth-year base of $455,000 at offices that matched. NALP's survey as of 1 January 2025 put the overall first-year median at $200,000 across 437 offices. A Springfield or Jefferson City seat priced at the national floor is a different product from the local occupation table. A St. Louis commercial seat whose candidate can see that floor still has to answer it.
How long does a Missouri legal hire take?
The New York associate desk this state page uses closed ⟦33⟧ associate searches over three years, ⟦94⟧ percent completed, with a median of ⟦11⟧ working days from offer to acceptance. The typical timeline on that line is ⟦6⟧ to ⟦12⟧ weeks. A Missouri license is a separate clock. Firm-wide, the in-house median to an accepted offer is 11 weeks, which is not that associate timeline. A St. Louis-headquartered food manufacturer hired its first general counsel in ⟦14⟧ weeks.
Why is the licensed-lawyer roll so much larger than the wage count?
The Missouri Bar's 2025 attorney enrollment counted 29,117 actively licensed lawyers. Wage-and-salary employment in the May 2025 OEWS was 11,560. That is about 2.5 licensed lawyers for every covered job. In the same enrollment, 21.4 percent listed a primary practice out of state, up from 19.98 percent in 2023. The occupation survey excludes most self-employed lawyers and partner residual draws. The roll is not the paycheck.
Wage surveys, the bar roll, the tax table, and the New York file.
Employed-lawyer medians come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics via O*NET. Employment and rank come from WageDex's compilation of that release. The license roll comes from The Missouri Bar. The 2026 tax table comes from the Tax Foundation. Sartori figures come from the research program, with the New York associate book kept separate from the firm-wide in-house median.
Sources and further reading
7 references- Sartori & Partners — research program and in-house placements sartoriglobal.com ↗
- Missouri Wages: 23-1011.00 - Lawyers — O*NET (BLS 2025 wage data) onetonline.org ↗
- Lawyers in Missouri — WageDex (BLS OEWS May 2025 compilation, 10 August 2026) wagedex.com ↗
- Despite Expectations, $225,000 Entry Associate Salaries Lag at Large Law Firms — NALP press release, 28 May 2025 nalp.org ↗
- Biglaw Salary Scale + Bonuses (1968–2026) — Biglaw Investor biglawinvestor.com ↗
- 2025 Missouri Bar member data reflects shifts in the profession — The Missouri Bar, March 2025 news.mobar.org ↗
- State Individual Income Tax Rates and Brackets, as of January 1, 2026 — Tax Foundation taxfoundation.org ↗
BLS OEWS percentiles describe employed lawyers and exclude most partners' residual draws. WageDex employment is a secondary compilation of the May 2025 OEWS. NALP figures are participating-office first-year bases as of 1 January 2025, before the July 2026 lockstep. The lockstep is not a Missouri office census. Tax Foundation note (a) local rates use 2023 data. The Missouri Bar percentages describe the 2025 enrollment, not wages. New York associate-line counts on this page are not a Missouri placement record.
Our own numbers — the New York interview cohort, the associate-line telemetry, and the firm-wide in-house placement count — come from the continuous research program described on our research page.
Adjacent maps for the same two readers.
Lawyer salary in Kansas 2026
The Kansas side of the bi-state Kansas City wage area, and the Wichita table this Missouri page does not reprint.
Read the Kansas tableLawyer salary in Illinois 2026
Chicago and the downstate Illinois cells. St. Louis appears there only as a bi-state row.
Read the Illinois tableIn-house counsel salary 2026
National in-house cash by seniority — the U.S. bands this Missouri page does not reprint.
Read the national in-house benchmarkA quiet conversation
Print the Missouri row that matches the seat.
We tell a general counsel when a statewide median will not hold in St. Louis, and when a national floor is the wrong Springfield number. Confidential, no obligation.