Attorney / Lawyer

Also known as: Lawyer, Counsel, Esquire

Salary data based on 2025 BLS, Glassdoor, and industry reports. Actual compensation varies by location, experience, and employer.

This career typically requires a doctoral/professional degree. Here are the top colleges for it:

1

UPennInternational Relations

2

YalePre-Law / Legal Studies

3

StanfordPolitical Science

4

UChicagoPre-Law / Legal Studies

5

UMichPolitical Science

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Attorneys keep a strong regulatory floor — bar admission, unauthorized-practice-of-law statutes, court appearance, and signature liability mean AI cannot file motions, appear before a judge, or sign legal opinions. That floor keeps the score from going higher. Above the floor, however, the bulk of associate work — document review, due diligence, contract drafting, legal research, brief drafting — is exactly what tools like Harvey, CoCounsel, and Legora are now doing in production. By early 2026, every Magic Circle firm had picked an enterprise AI platform (Slaughter and May rolled Harvey firmwide on April 30, 2026 across M&A, due diligence, and regulatory research; Linklaters chose Legora; A&O Shearman chose Harvey; Freshfields uses Anthropic and Google), and legal recruiters report roughly 70% of attorneys are using AI weekly as of March 2026.

Ratings reflect a 10-year outlook based on 2025-2026 research, weighted toward entry-level impact. Individual outcomes will vary.