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Feature TYLA Affiliate

Fort Worth/Tarrant County Young Lawyers Project - Young Lawyers Salary Survey
By:  Jennifer L. Willingham

In today's economy, it is imperative for young lawyers and the employers hiring them to know how much a young attorney can reasonably expect to earn during their first few years of practice. Unfortunately, such information has generally been unavailable in Fort Worth and surrounding areas in Tarrant County. Because of the uniqueness of Fort Worth, being the smaller of the large Texas cities, most of the Fort Worth law firms do not participate in NALP (The Association for Legal Career Professionals) or other salary and benefits surveys. As a result, any forthcoming information on salary and benefits has often been skewed by articles and advertisements focusing only on the few largest law firms in the area. Even the local law school has trouble “guesstimating” the salaries of young lawyers and local firms have also been successful in keeping this information out of the public domain. Because of the lack of information, it is extremely difficult for young lawyers beginning their career or making lateral moves to negotiate salary and benefits, or to know what to expect upon graduation if they are seeking employment in the Fort Worth/Tarrant County areas.

Accordingly, in 2009, the Fort Worth-Tarrant County Young Lawyers Association, in collaboration with the Career Services Offices at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law, conducted a voluntary Young Lawyers Survey of those young attorneys practicing within Fort Worth and the surrounding areas of Tarrant County. The goal of the survey was to gather information about Fort Worth and Tarrant County legal markets to assist young lawyers entering the profession, as well as local employers looking to hire young attorneys, in these areas. The results of the survey are provided for your review here.

This project was generously funded by a grant from the TYLA. Along with the TYLA, a special thank you is owed to the following for assisting with the success of this project: the FW-TCYLA members who participated in the survey, the committee who coordinated the survey, Arturo Errisuriz–Assistant Dean for Career Services of Texas Wesleyan University School of Law, and our past presidents Caroline Harrison, Leslie Hunt and Theresa Berend. The Salary Survey was a successful endeavor and the FW-TCYLA plans on improving and continuing this project to help assist its members and other young attorneys who are seeking employment in the Fort Worth and surrounding Tarrant County areas.

Jennifer L. Willingham, is the Immediate Past-President of FW-TCYLA and an attorney with Brown, Dean, Wiseman, Proctor, Hart & Howell LLP.