Lawyer Salary in Nebraska 2026: A Midwest Cell, Not Chicago Lockstep

Anyone asking for the 2026 Nebraska cell is usually holding last year’s Chicago number. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2025, as tabulated for SOC 23-1011 Lawyers in Nebraska, reports 3,490 wage-and-salary jobs, a median annual wage of $109,170 ($52.49 an hour), and a mean of $133,490. The 10th percentile is $65,030; the 25th is $81,240; the 75th is $166,080; the 90th is $217,700. The Occupational Outlook Handbook, last modified 27 August 2026, puts the national lawyer median at $159,670 in May 2025. Nebraska’s median is 31.6 percent below that national cell — the year-in-the-cell comparison, not a 2024 restatement.

What the statewide median measures matters as much as the number. OEWS is employer-reported wages for wage-and-salary lawyers. It excludes most self-employed lawyers and equity partners of unincorporated practices. The American Bar Association’s 2024 National Lawyer Population Survey counts 5,839 resident active Nebraska attorneys, up from 5,689 in 2023 and from 5,028 in 2014. Those two stocks are not interchangeable: one is a payroll survey, the other is a license count.

The BLS Midwest Information Office, on 30 July 2026, put the Omaha, NE-IA MSA legal-occupations mean at $56.50 an hour against $67.07 nationally, and Lincoln’s legal-occupations mean at $46.48 — a $10.02-an-hour gap to Omaha on the same vintage. Legal occupations were 0.7 percent of Omaha employment versus 0.8 percent nationally; Lincoln matched the national share at 0.8 percent. Annualizing the group means on a 2,080-hour year puts Omaha legal occupations at $117,520 and Lincoln at $96,678. The MSA definition for Omaha includes three Iowa counties; this page prices the Nebraska cell, not the Iowa bar.

NALP’s 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey, reported 28 May 2025 as of 1 January 2025 across 437 offices, is the other public scale. Median first-year base: $200,000 all offices; $215,000 in firms of 701-plus lawyers; $190,000 in firms of 251–700; $150,000 in firms of 250 or fewer. For locations outside the 19 named cities, the Midwest residual first-year median was $160,000 — the same residual as the South, against $181,900 in the West and $170,000 in the Northeast. Six of the 19 named cities had a $225,000 first-year median. Omaha is not among them. The 2026 lockstep first-year base on the Biglaw Investor table is $235,000. That is the Chicago and New York cell this page is written against; it is not a Nebraska observation.

A quotable line for the company that has to put a lawyer on the payroll: the 2026 Nebraska cell is a Midwest residual, not a named-city lockstep.

LB 525, the Agricultural Data Privacy Act, was signed on 14 April 2026 after unicameral passage 49–0–0 on 10 April. It is first-in-nation producer ownership: the producer owns agronomic, climate, land, livestock, management, and sustainability data linked to an identifiable producer; controllers and processors hold only a nonexclusive right to service, maintain, or process; sale requires express written consent on a disclosure separate from the primary terms. A mandatory contract clause applies from 1 January 2027. The Attorney General has exclusive enforcement; $1,000 per violation after a 45-day cure, with no cure for unconsented sales; no private right of action. Iowa, Missouri, and Colorado have proposed bills of their own. The hiring consequence is mid-level agribusiness and privacy counsel at Omaha firms in 2026, with a contract-remediation spike into 2027, plus AG consumer and agricultural enforcement.

LB 1261, approved by the Governor on 14 April 2026, amends § 70-670 so that public-power districts may not take by eminent domain a privately owned generation facility that serves a single industrial customer with new load above 1,000 MW at one site, is co-located or adjacent with electrically equivalent interconnection, has Nebraska Power Review Board approval, and is under long-term contract with the local public-power district. It applies to contracts entered on or before 31 December 2031. The American Public Power Association, on 9 June 2026, recorded support from the Nebraska Public Power District, Omaha Public Power District, and Lincoln Electric System. The seat this statute prices is energy, utilities, construction, and real-property counsel — at the districts and at Omaha firms that already sit next to construction claims — not a hyperscale in-house general counsel.

LB 921, the Nebraska WARN Act, signed 14 April 2026 and effective July 2026, requires employers with 100 or more employees, excluding part-time, to give 90 days’ written notice of a business closing or mass layoff (100 or more employment losses at a single site in 30 days) to affected employees and the Nebraska Department of Labor. Civil penalty up to $100 a day; pay-in-lieu permitted; no private damages. Federal WARN may still apply independently; Nebraska’s uniform 100-employee trigger can bite where federal WARN does not. Employment counsel at the Chambers Band 1 and Band 2 Labor & Employment shops, and in-house employment at railroad, insurer, EPC, and health-system buyers, is the 2026 H2 seat.

Executive Order 26-17, dated 21 July 2026, ends access to ImagiNE Nebraska Act tax incentives for data-center applications. The Department of Economic Development, the Department of Revenue, and the Department of Water, Environment and Energy must review proposals jointly; DWEE stands up a Data Center Task Force to recommend 2027 legislation on resource protection and county zoning guidelines. The Governor’s text is explicit: this is not a moratorium; local entities may still host, under the order’s guidelines. The hiring consequence is land-use, energy, and incentive-agreement counsel at county and firm desks through 2027. It is not a data-center general-counsel wave. Collapsing LB 1261 (a generation-siting rule) with EO 26-17 (an incentive freeze) into one “energy hiring boom” is a category error.

One more 2026 overlay sits on the consumer-privacy desk. The Age-Appropriate Online Design Code Act (LB 504), signed 30 May 2025, is in force from 1 January 2026, with Attorney General enforcement from 1 July 2026 as a deceptive-trade-practice. Covered online services that do business in Nebraska, determine processing of consumer data, exceed $25 million gross annual revenue, buy, sell, or share personal data of 50,000 or more consumers, and derive 50 percent or more of revenue from the sale or sharing of personal data must default to high-protection settings for minors. Civil penalties run up to $50,000 per violation. Privacy and consumer counsel at the AG’s office and at Omaha firms with tech and data clients is a mid-level 2026 H2 seat, not a lockstep spike.

Federal-court volume is a separate, smaller overlay. U.S. Courts Judicial Business 2025 recorded a 224 percent rise in District of Nebraska “other” immigration filings, up 161 cases to 233, while national immigration filings fell 17 percent. That is federal immigration and habeas capacity at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, federal defenders, and Omaha and Lincoln firms with a District of Nebraska practice. It is not a state-bar volume spike and it is not a compensation driver for the BLS cell. The Office of Dispute Resolution, in its FY2025 report released 24 November 2025, managed 3,996 cases from 1 July 2024 through 30 June 2025, with 73 percent reaching a full or partial agreement. That is family, parenting-plan, and juvenile ADR capacity, not a litigation-associate driver.