Salary · Tokyo 2026
Lawyer salary in Tokyo 2026: the yen wage and the dollar letter.
A general counsel writing the offer, and a lawyer reading it, are looking at two products that share a city. One is a yen employment wage. The other is a dollar figure carried over from a home-office scale. The dated public stock is the three-bar roll. There is no published 2026 yen associate ladder to match.
The 2026 window is a yen wage, not a dollar scale.
On 1 October 2026 the three Tokyo bars held 24,362 bengoshi. That roll is the stock behind lawyer salary Tokyo. No 2026 yen associate ladder was published against it.
Sartori & Partners has worked the Hong Kong in-house line that covers Tokyo for 8 years and maps 5,000 lawyers on that file. The map records admission and employer. It does not record an unpublished Tokyo wage.
The National Tax Agency’s income-tax table, current at 1 April 2026, runs from 5 percent to 45 percent of taxable income. A 2.1 percent reconstruction surtax still applies to 2026 income. The paycheck is not outside the tax.
The dated prints sit in the table. The tax table and the customs rate are next.
| Public print | Figure | What it measures | What it is not | Source and date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Three Tokyo bars, bengoshi | 24,362 | Tokyo 9,665, Dai-ichi Tokyo 7,645, Daini Tokyo 7,052 | Not a salary and not gaiben | JFBA membership table, 1 October 2026 |
| National bengoshi roll | 48,037 | Attorneys on the JFBA roll, of whom 10,088 are women | Not the three-bar subtotal | JFBA, 1 October 2026 |
| JFBA median receipts | ¥15.00 million | Median revenue, 1,954 respondents; 5 percent trimmed mean ¥20.83 million | Not a Tokyo W-2 and not 2026 | JFBA survey 2023, amounts for 2022 |
| JFBA median income | ¥8.00 million | Median income, 1,839 respondents; 5 percent trimmed mean ¥10.22 million | Not taxable income and not in-house base | Same survey |
| October customs dollar | 159 yen | Standard foreign-exchange rate, 1 US dollar | Not a market close and not a pay scale | Bank of Japan, announced 18 September 2026 |
| In-house, three Tokyo bars | 3,130 | Tokyo Bar 1,197, Dai-ichi Tokyo 989, Daini Tokyo 944 | Not firm associates and not gaiben | JILA, 30 June 2026 |
| In-house, national | 3,756 | In-house bengoshi at 1,552 employers; 7.8 percent of 48,106 | Not a pay band | JILA, 30 June 2026 |
| Three-bar roll, 31 March 2025 | 23,107 | Tokyo 9,351, Dai-ichi Tokyo 7,046, Daini Tokyo 6,710 | Not the October 2026 roll | JFBA white-paper statistics, 31 March 2025 |
The three-bar total of 24,362 is 9,665 + 7,645 + 7,052. Sources listed below.
- 5,636
- Women on the three Tokyo bars, 1 October 20262,161 + 1,794 + 1,681, or 23.1 percent of 24,362
- JFBA membership table, 1 October 2026
- 1,552
- Employers with in-house bengoshi, 30 June 2026Up 13 from 1,539 a year earlier
- JILA employer table, 30 June 2026
- ¥20.83m
- Trimmed-mean attorney receipts, 20225 percent trimmed mean; median was ¥15.00 million
- JFBA survey 2023
- 10%
- Standard income-based inhabitant taxPrefectural plus municipal; not a Tokyo ordinance this page reprints
- OECD Taxing Wages 2026, Japan
The resident wage is taxed. The customs rate only translates it.
Every public cash figure on this page carries its year in the same sentence. The tax table is 2026 law. The receipts survey is a 2022 result published in 2023. The customs rate applies during October 2026.
A Tokyo paycheck is inside the income tax. The National Tax Agency’s table, current at 1 April 2026, taxes taxable income in seven bands from 5 percent to 45 percent. The 33 percent band starts at ¥9 million. The 40 percent band starts at ¥18 million. The 45 percent band starts at ¥40 million. The Agency’s own example puts taxable income of ¥7 million at ¥974,000 of national tax, using the 23 percent band and the ¥636,000 deduction. A reconstruction surtax of 2.1 percent of that national tax still applies to 2026 income. From income arising on or after 1 January 2027 the reconstruction rate falls to 1.1 percent and a defense surtax is withheld with it. A 2026 letter is not yet on that 2027 rule.
Local inhabitant tax sits on top of the national tax for a resident. OECD Taxing Wages 2026 records Japan’s standard income-based inhabitant tax at 10 percent. That is the standard rate in the OECD note, not a special-ward ordinance reprinted here. It is enough to reject a “tax-free Tokyo package.” There is no wage carve-out of the Dubai kind on a Japan employment contract.
The only dated dollar peg used on this page is the Bank of Japan standard rate for October 2026: 159 yen per US dollar, announced by the International Department on 18 September 2026. It is the customs standard rate for the month, not the 30 September market close. ¥15.00 million divided by 159 is $94,340 to the nearest dollar. ¥8.00 million divided by 159 is $50,314. Those two quotients are the dollar read of the national medians. They are not what a Tokyo employer posted.
The medians themselves are older than the roll. The JFBA comparison table for the 2023 survey shows median receipts of ¥15.00 million (1,954 respondents) and median income of ¥8.00 million (1,839). The 5 percent trimmed means are ¥20.83 million and ¥10.22 million. Note 4 states that the year named is the survey year and the amounts are the prior year, so these are 2022 results. They mix solos, small offices and employed lawyers. Quotable line: the ¥15.00 million median is not a Tokyo paycheck.
The roll moved while that survey sat still. On 31 March 2025 the same three bars held 23,107 bengoshi: Tokyo 9,351, Dai-ichi Tokyo 7,046, Daini Tokyo 6,710, inside a national roll of 46,243. On 1 October 2026 they held 24,362, which is 1,255 more. The national roll on that October date was 48,037. Headcount growth is not a pay rise. It is the denominator a company is hiring from.
A yen wage is the right bid when the seat is a bengoshi on a Japan contract.
Three conditions travel together: Japanese qualification, a Japan employment contract, and a cash line written in yen. Drop one and the letter describes a different seat.
Yen wageA different product
- Bengoshi, yen Registered on a Tokyo bar, employed in Japan, paid in yen. The tax table applies to the resident. This is the letter a company can defend.
- In-house bengoshi Same credential, employer address registered as the office. JILA’s census is this person. The cash line is still a wage, not a firm receipt.
- Anything else A gaiben instruction, a home-office dollar scale, or the national median pasted into an offer. Each one is a different document.
On 1 October 2026 the three bars held 534 of the 583 gaiben on the national roll: Tokyo 115, Dai-ichi Tokyo 169, Daini Tokyo 250. That is 91.6 percent of the gaiben roll, in the same city as the bengoshi stock, on a different register. The same membership page counted 48,037 attorneys, 1,914 attorney corporations, 12 gaiben corporations, and zero joint corporations of bengoshi and gaiben. Joint corporations have been available since November 2022. Membership is still zero. A lawyer becomes a bengoshi by registering through a local bar onto the JFBA roll. The federation’s own account is that bars were set one to a district, with three in Tokyo, and that there are 52 bars now. A company that needs Japanese-law work is hiring a bengoshi from that roll, not a gaiben and not a corporation that does not exist. Which foreign-law seats stay empty is the Tokyo market page.
The in-house share of the June roll is the company’s actual bench. JILA’s 30 June 2026 table puts 1,197 in-house bengoshi on the Tokyo Bar (12.4 percent of that bar’s 9,687 lawyers), 989 on Dai-ichi Tokyo (12.9 percent of 7,644), and 944 on Daini Tokyo (13.3 percent of 7,078). Those three counts are 3,130. The three bars’ own lawyer totals on that June table sum to 24,409. In-house bengoshi were 3,130 of that 24,409, or 12.8 percent. They were 3,130 of the national in-house stock of 3,756, or 83.3 percent.
A class-year dollar draft does not become Tokyo cash.
The mistake is portable. A committee takes a home-office scale, converts it once, and calls the result the Tokyo offer. The customs rate can translate a yen wage. It cannot invent one.
Already the wrong draftStill worth rewriting
- Median pasted in The 2022 national receipt, dropped into a 2026 offer as if it were a grade.
- Dollar pasted in A class-year figure from another office, with Tokyo named in the header and the currency unchanged.
- Gaiben wage for Japanese law Foreign-law registration asked to do reserved Japanese-law work. The credential does not stretch.
- Yen, then dollars Write the wage in yen. Show the customs quotient beside it. Do not reverse the order.
One employer page does print a yen figure, and it is not a listed-company grade. JICA’s Legal Affairs Division posting for a specialist attorney, start planned for January 2025, lists grade 7 at a monthly base of ¥555,630 and describes annual pay as about ¥10 million, at the Tokyo headquarters, with overtime, June and December bonuses, a commuting allowance and a special-city allowance, and without housing or a retirement allowance. That is a public-corporation cell from a 2025 requisition. It is the only employer-printed attorney cash line opened for this page. It is not a 2026 revision, and it is not Mitsui’s wage.
National receipts, and which 2026 matters to pay for now, are on lawyer salary in Japan. The Tokyo letter is the currency, the resident tax, and the three-bar stock.
Who pays lawyer salary Tokyo is a small-desk market.
JILA's employer table is a headcount of who already pays an in-house bengoshi. It is not a salary band. The concentration is the point.
On 30 June 2026, 3,756 in-house bengoshi worked at 1,552 employers. Dividing those two JILA figures gives 2.4 lawyers per employer. The same table’s prior column, 30 June 2025, was 3,596 lawyers at 1,539 employers. The year added 160 lawyers and 13 employers. Growth is inside desks that already hire, not a new city of one-lawyer departments.
The named end of that table, final update 30 June 2026, is not an average desk. The largest employer held 73 in-house bengoshi. Mitsui & Co. held 42. Marubeni held 35. Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank held 31. Nomura Securities held 30. The 20th desk, Sumitomo Electric, held 15. A general counsel benchmarking a first Tokyo hire against the largest desk is benchmarking the wrong company.
Women are a larger share of the in-house stock than of the national roll. JILA’s June 2026 gender table counts 1,537 women (40.9 percent) and 2,219 men (59.1 percent) inside the 3,756. The same note puts women at 10,073 of 48,106 lawyers on the June roll, or 20.9 percent. The October membership page later put women at 10,088 of 48,037, or 21.0 percent. Those are two dates. They are not a pay gap study. They do tell a company that an in-house shortlist drawn to look like the national bar will miss the in-house mix.
Osaka’s in-house count on the same June table is 273. It is named so a Tokyo budget is not mistaken for a national one. The Tokyo three-bar in-house figure remains 3,130.
The letter that signed was the yen base. The dollar figure was a home-office scale, and the candidate read it that way.
The move changes currency and residence, not the job title.
Two readers open the same PDF. The company is underwriting a yen cost. The lawyer is underwriting a resident tax bill. A title change does not reconcile them.
Your exposure is a letter in the wrong currency, not a missing name.
- Write the currency first. Yen for a Japan employment contract. Show dollars only as ¥ divided by 159, and label the rate as the October customs standard.
- Match the credential to the work. Japanese-law work is a bengoshi. A gaiben letter does not substitute. Joint corporations of the two still numbered zero on 1 October 2026.
- Leave the median off the grade. ¥15.00 million is a 2022 receipt across 1,954 respondents. It is not the offer.
- Open it on the company desk. Tokyo-covering briefs sit with in-house counsel recruiting. The conversation starts at a call, not at a candidate form.
Your net is the yen wage after the resident tax table, not the dollar figure in the header.
- Ask which currency is the contract. A dollar number next to a Tokyo address can still be a home-office scale. The wage that will be taxed is the one in the contract.
- Read the resident brackets. Taxable income is taxed from 5 percent to 45 percent, plus 2.1 percent reconstruction surtax on the national tax. The ¥7 million example from the Agency is ¥974,000 of national tax before that surtax.
- Skip the median as a peer. The ¥8.00 million median income is a national 2022 result. An in-house wage is a different instrument.
- Use the Japan page for timing. Statute timing for a 2026 hire is on the Japan salary page. The Tokyo letter is the currency and the tax.
Across 250 structured interviews with Hong Kong in-house counsel and general counsel, 88 had priced a Tokyo offer in a 24-month window. Of that group, 61 said the letter that closed was a yen base, not a US dollar class-year figure. In a separate cut of the same cohort, 72 general counsel and heads of legal, over the same 24 months, included 44 who said a dollar figure in the draft was read as a home-office scale. The two cuts overlap. They are not a partition of the 250.
We had the dollar number ready. They sent back a yen base. That was the version the candidate would sign.
Price the yen letter, then run the search against that letter.
The files that closed were the ones whose currency matched the contract. The files that slipped had opened on a dollar draft or on the national median.
- 01 — Contract Is the person a bengoshi on a Japan employment contract? If the work is foreign law only, stop. This is a gaiben instruction, and the market page owns that seat.
- 02 — Currency Is the cash line written in yen? If the draft is a dollar class-year figure, rewrite it. Do not send it as the Tokyo bid.
- 03 — Tax Has anyone applied the resident brackets to that yen, not to a headline dollar amount? If the board pack shows only the dollar quotient, the lawyer is being shown a different net.
- → All three answered yes: send the yen letter, keep the customs quotient beside it, and do not invent a Tokyo associate scale.
Sartori & Partners’ Hong Kong in-house line is the book Tokyo coverage is read from. Quarterly surveys on the global file have run since 2019. Of 17 closed searches over three years, 9 named Tokyo coverage in the brief. Completion on the line is 93 percent. The typical span is 4 to 7 months. Median time from offer to acceptance is 16 working days. Counter-offers landed on 5 of those closed files, the 30 percent incidence on the line. We have worked that line for 8 years, for companies hiring into Japan, not for a published lockstep. The global map is a separate count: 1,480,000+ lawyers.
What the company pays and what the lawyer keeps are not the same yen. The contract wage is the company’s cash line. National tax and the 10 percent standard inhabitant tax come off the lawyer’s taxable income, not off a second salary the company posts. A board that reports in dollars can place the October customs quotient beside the yen. It should not replace the yen with that quotient and call the result the offer. Employer social-insurance contributions vary by health-insurance society. There is no single national add-on to print beside the wage.
One of the Tokyo-coverage files is the case the letter has to survive. A TSE Prime industrial group in Tokyo hired a head of legal. The first draft was a dollar class-year figure with Tokyo in the header. It was rewritten as a yen base before it went out. The search closed in 22 weeks, inside the line’s usual span, and inside the 16-day path from the rewritten offer to signature. The dollar draft would not have been that offer.
The commercial terms around the search are the firm’s, not a Tokyo surcharge. The work is retained only. The fee is 25–30 percent of the hire’s total first-year compensation. Thirty percent of that fee is paid as a retainer at engagement and kept if the client cancels. A replacement term on a general counsel search is 12 months. Those terms do not change because the wage is in yen.
The company that needs the seat filled starts at a confidential hiring conversation. The lawyer weighing a letter starts from the currency in the contract and the National Tax Agency table, not from a national median.
Lawyer salary in Tokyo 2026: questions from both sides of the offer letter
What is lawyer salary Tokyo in 2026?
On 1 October 2026 the three Tokyo bars held 24,362 bengoshi, and no 2026 yen associate scale is published. The Japan Federation of Bar Associations’ 2023 survey, of calendar-2022 results, put national median receipts at ¥15.00 million among 1,954 respondents. That sample is not a Tokyo wage. A company paying a bengoshi on a Japan employment contract is paying a yen wage inside the National Tax Agency brackets current at 1 April 2026. Sartori closed 9 searches that named Tokyo coverage, inside 17 closed in-house searches over three years.
How many US dollars is that Tokyo figure?
The Bank of Japan’s October 2026 customs rate is 159 yen per dollar, announced on 18 September 2026. Dividing national median receipts of ¥15.00 million by 159 gives $94,340 to the nearest dollar. Dividing median income of ¥8.00 million by the same rate gives $50,314. Those dollars are arithmetic on a customs rate. They are not a Tokyo salary survey and not a class-year scale.
Does the JFBA median describe a Tokyo in-house salary?
No. Median receipts in the 2023 survey were ¥15.00 million across 1,954 respondents, for 2022, nationwide. Median income was ¥8.00 million across 1,839. The survey mixes solos, small firms and employed lawyers, and a tax-return receipt is not a paycheck. JILA counted 3,130 in-house bengoshi on the three Tokyo bars as of 30 June 2026, out of 3,756 nationally.
Who pays a Tokyo lawyer in 2026, the company or the firm?
JILA counted 3,756 in-house bengoshi at 1,552 employers on 30 June 2026, separate from firm payroll. Of those, 3,130 sat on a Tokyo three-bar roll. The largest desk on that employer table held 73, Mitsui & Co. held 42, and Marubeni held 35. A firm associate letter and a company yen wage are different products. The October roll also lists 534 gaiben on the three bars.
What does a lateral move change in a Tokyo package?
A lateral changes currency and tax: the national rate still runs from 5 percent to 45 percent. The National Tax Agency table current at 1 April 2026 is the resident scale, and a 2.1 percent reconstruction surtax still applies to 2026 income. A dollar home-office figure does not become a yen wage because the desk is in Tokyo. Of 88 people in the Hong Kong interview cohort who had priced a Tokyo offer, 61 said the letter that closed was yen.
How long does a Tokyo-covering in-house search take?
The typical timeline is 4 to 7 months, with a median 16 working days from offer to acceptance. Completion on that Hong Kong in-house line is 93 percent across 17 closed searches over three years. 9 of those 17 named Tokyo coverage. Counter-offers landed on 5 of the 17. One TSE Prime industrial group hired its head of legal in 22 weeks, inside that band, after the first draft in dollars was rewritten in yen.
Bar rolls, the tax table, the customs rate, and the in-house census.
Headcount comes from the Japan Federation of Bar Associations and from JILA. Brackets come from the National Tax Agency. The dollar rate comes from the Bank of Japan. The one employer cash line comes from a JICA posting.
Sources and further reading
13 references- Sartori & Partners — research program sartoriglobal.com ↗
- 日本弁護士連合会 — 日弁連の会員（2026年10月1日現在） nichibenren.or.jp ↗
- 弁護士会別会員数（2026年10月1日現在） nichibenren.or.jp ↗
- 弁護士会別弁護士数（2025年3月31日現在） nichibenren.or.jp ↗
- 弁護士の収入・所得／経年変化比較（弁護士白書統計 2023） nichibenren.or.jp ↗
- 日本組織内弁護士協会 — 企業内弁護士数の推移（2001年～2026年） jila.jp ↗
- 日本組織内弁護士協会 — 企業内弁護士を多く抱える企業上位20社の推移（2001年～2026年） jila.jp ↗
- 日本組織内弁護士協会 — 企業内弁護士の男女別人数（2001年～2026年） jila.jp ↗
- 日本組織内弁護士協会 — 2026年6月30日時点の企業内弁護士の人数を公表しました（2026年7月24日） jila.jp ↗
- 国税庁 — No.2260 所得税の税率（令和8年4月1日現在法令等） nta.go.jp ↗
- 日本銀行 — 基準外国為替相場及び裁定外国為替相場（令和8年10月分） boj.or.jp ↗
- OECD — Taxing Wages 2026: Japan oecd.org ↗
- JICA — 総務部法務課専門嘱託（弁護士）の募集（2025年1月採用予定） partner.jica.go.jp ↗
The 24,362 figure is bengoshi on three bars at 1 October 2026, not gaiben and not in-house. The ¥15.00 million and ¥8.00 million medians are 2022 amounts from the 2023 survey. The $94,340 and $50,314 figures are those medians divided by the October customs rate of 159. JILA's 3,130 is in-house bengoshi, not the October roll. The JICA monthly base is a January 2025 requisition. Mandate counts sit inside 17 closed searches.
Our own numbers — the Hong Kong interview cohort, the in-house telemetry, the counter-offer count and the offer-to-acceptance window — come from the research program on our research page. The national pay-or-wait read is lawyer salary in Japan, 2026.
Adjacent reads for the same two buyers.
Lawyer salary in Japan 2026
The national receipts distribution and the pay-or-wait clock. This page owns the Tokyo yen wage and the dollar letter.
Read the Japan salary pageLegal market Tokyo 2026
Who is hiring, and which gaiben seats stay empty. Pay products stay on this page.
Read the Tokyo market mapIn-house counsel recruiting
How a company brief is run when the seat sits on a payroll, including a Tokyo desk read from the Hong Kong line.
See the in-house deskA quiet conversation
Price the Tokyo seat in yen before the letter goes out.
Whether you are a general counsel writing the 2026 letter or a head of legal filling a Tokyo seat, we will say which product you are buying before anyone sees a name. Confidential, no obligation.