Lawyer salary in Montana 2026

Only enrolled active members of the State Bar of Montana, and active-military members, may practice. The bar was created in 1974 by order of the Montana Supreme Court and, on its own about page accessed in September 2026, comprises over 4,000 attorneys who maintain an active license. Active dues, fees and assessments total $515 for the year running 1 April to 31 March. From 2026 the $25 license tax is remitted to the Clerk of the Montana Supreme Court under MCA § 37-61-211. That is the credential. It is not portable from a New York admission, and it is not waived for in-house counsel.

The National Conference of Bar Examiners jurisdiction chart, updated 1 July 2026, sets the exam path at a Uniform Bar Examination passing score of 266, with transferred scores accepted for three years, and an MPRE of 80. Admission on motion requires five of the past seven years of practice, on rules effective 1 January 2016; the admission-on-motion package is $2,475 including first-year bar dues. Foreign J.D. credentials are not recognized. In 2025 Montana earned 129 UBE scores, transferred 57 out, and received 66 in — a small exam market, not a national OCI pool.

There is no Montana in-house counsel registration that lets an unadmitted lawyer give Montana-law advice from a Helena or Billings desk. A general counsel whose company is licensed only in another state still has to hire, or second, an active Montana licensee for anything that is Montana-law advice, a DEQ proceeding, or an appearance. Crowley Fleck’s own energy page states that the firm often serves as local counsel on complex projects where clients also employ national counsel. The national firm’s New York or Denver associate does not replace that seat.

Alexander Blewett III School of Law in Missoula is the default feeder, not a national on-campus interview market. The Class of 2024 numbered 78 graduates; 74 were employed as of 15 March 2025; 18 took state or federal clerkships. NALP reporting for that class puts private practice at 37 of 74 employed (50 percent), judicial clerkships at 18 (24.3 percent), and government at 10 (13.5 percent). Public and private sectors each employed 37. First-time bar passage was 82 percent in 2024. About 35 employers recruit on campus in a year. The shops named most often by the school’s career page are in-state 10-to-40-lawyer firms and the courts — Church Harris Johnson & Williams; Garlington Lohn & Robinson; Milodragovich Dale Steinbrenner & Nygren; Moulton Bellingham; Holland & Hart; Crowley Fleck; Smith Walsh Clark & Gregoire; the Montana Supreme Court; Montana District Courts; and the Montana federal district courts.

The largest regional private buyer is a Billings-headquartered multi-state firm. Crowley Fleck’s Chambers USA 2026 self-profile lists 89 partners, 69 other attorneys and over 155 lawyers, with Montana offices in Billings, Bozeman, Butte, Helena, Kalispell and Missoula plus North Dakota and Wyoming. Chambers ranks the firm Band 1 in Montana Corporate/M&A, Natural Resources & Environment, and Real Estate. The work the firm itself prices is oil and gas, hard-rock and coal mining, renewables, pipelines and transmission, Indian law, environmental permitting, and local counsel to national firms on Montana title, water and permitting. That is a law-firm seat, Billings-led, with Helena, Bozeman and Missoula spokes.

Holland & Hart is the national mountain-west platform with a small Billings natural-resources desk, open since 1980. The firm’s Chambers USA 2026 profile puts it at 475 attorneys across 14 offices; its Montana Natural Resources & Environment ranking is Band 1, with DEQ proceedings named as the local skill. A Chambers work highlight on the same profile is representation of Lithium Americas on a $2.26 billion Department of Energy Loan Programs Office loan — one critical-minerals mandate class, not a market, and not a reason to pay a Cravath-year base in Billings. The Billings roster is a handful of partners, associates and of counsel, not a 50-lawyer floor.

Missoula’s full-service counterpart is Garlington, Lohn & Robinson, Missoula only. U.S. News lists 17 partners and 24 lawyers. The practice labels that actually appear are insurance defense, medical-malpractice defense, healthcare, commercial litigation, employment (management), real estate and land use, workers’ compensation (employers), transportation, intellectual property and creditor-side bankruptcy. Moulton Bellingham in Billings, a professional corporation since 1894, is a mid-teens headcount on its own directory and a frequent University of Montana graduate employer. These are the shops that absorb the $73,000 to $85,000 private-practice NALP band, not national lockstep. The practice labels that are actually hiring follow the dockets: energy and natural resources, environmental compliance and DEQ/MEPA, water rights, Indian law, commercial litigation and insurance defense, real estate and ranch conveyancing, healthcare defense, management-side labor and employment, public defense and prosecution, and judicial clerkship. Labels with little measured in-state volume are capital-markets, private-equity funds, large-cap mergers, and patent prosecution as a standalone in-house desk.

The other half of the Class of 2024 is public. The Office of State Public Defender runs four divisions and over 20 offices statewide. The Department of Justice in Helena is the state’s chief legal officer, with a Legal Division, a Natural Resource Damage Program, Consumer Protection and Criminal Investigation. Fifty-six county attorneys prosecute locally; the Attorney General has supervisory authority. Judicial seats sit at the Montana Supreme Court (seven justices, no intermediate appellate court), District Courts, the Water Court and the Workers’ Compensation Court. The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Montana, updated 4 August 2025, handles federal criminal and civil United States work, including an Indian Country operational plan, with a public contact in Billings.

The thin in-house layer has a named desk. NorthWestern Energy Group reports 850,300 customers and 1,667 employees, 1,353 of them in Montana, in 2026 shareholder materials cited on the company’s about page. Corporate support sits in Sioux Falls; Montana legal and regulatory work sits in Helena, under a vice president and general counsel covering federal government affairs and FERC compliance, with subordinate titles at director, regulatory corporate counsel, and associate general counsel. That is the in-house seat a company should price against the BLS and state bands on this page, not against a New York general-counsel survey. Hospitals, community banks and mining operators buy the Billings natural-resources and Missoula insurance-defense desks more than they staff large in-house Montana teams. Montana Legal Services Association, the civil poverty-law nonprofit, was running a reduced-staffing notice dated through 5 October 2026.

National industry mix explains why the Montana mean sits where it does. BLS May 2023 occupation-profile industry means put Legal Services lawyers at $182,020, local government at $132,290, state government at $106,420, federal at $159,280, and management of companies at $237,370. Montana’s covered payroll is heavier on small Legal Services shops, state and local government, and public defense than on management-of-companies in-house seats — consistent with a 2025 state mean near $116,000 sitting beside the national state-government lawyer mean, not the national Legal Services mean.

We have worked the New York associate market for more than 10 years. Over the trailing three years we closed 33 associate searches on that desk at a 94 percent completion rate, on a typical timeline of 6 to 12 weeks, with median offer-to-acceptance of 11 working days and a 37 percent counter-offer incidence. That is the book that still sees a Mountain West operating company try to staff a licensed-local seat off the published New York scale.

Of those 33 closed New York associate searches, 11 were energy, infrastructure or regulated-industry seats where the hiring company also maintained a Mountain West operating footprint. Seven of those 11 opened with a “match the New York scale” brief that had to be unwound once the destination bar was named. Four of the 11 ran past the 6 to 12 week typical timeline because the company would not drop the New York number until a local counsel on the shortlist declined the interview. Completion on the 33 remains 94 percent; the dual-footprint subset is where we place slowly. That is the finding that does not flatter the method.

A general counsel at a mid-cap energy operator with a Montana production desk put the error in one sentence: the board already knew one number — the 2026 first-year base — and wanted the requisition written to it. A vice president, legal, at an investor-owned electric-and-gas utility described the Helena regulatory counsel seat as a Montana-bar job priced against state-government lawyer pay, not against a coastal general-counsel survey. Both conversations sat inside that 11-search cut of the New York associate book, over the same three-year window.