Salary

• The national annual salary range for a sports lawyer is between $34,746 and $173,619, as of 2011, according to the Pay Scale website. The general rate for a lawyer ranges from $60.50 and $250 an hour, as of 2011.
  
  

Benefits and Bonuses

• The median annual bonus for a sports lawyer ranges from $5,000 for a sports lawyer with less than one year of experience, to $20,000 for a sports lawyer with 20 years of experience or more, as of 2011, according to Pay Scale. The most popular benefits include life insurance and disability; paid holidays, vacation and sick leave; 401ks and private medical insurance.
  
  

Differences by Location

• The most popular cities for sports lawyers are New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to Pay Scale. The New Mexico Business Weekly identifies California as the state with the highest-paid lawyers generally, citing the average annual salary for the San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City area as $167,130, and the average annual salary for the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale area as $155,120. The average annual salary for a lawyer in the New York-White Plains-Wayne, New York-New Jersey area is $166,130.
  
  

Outlook

• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of lawyers will grow by 13 percent between 2008 and 2018, about as fast as the average for all occupations. Job growth among lawyers will result from greater demand for legal services in the areas of intellectual property, bankruptcy, corporate and security litigation, and antitrust law. However, the BLS predicts that businesses will increasingly use large accounting firms and paralegals rather than lawyers, and that competition for legal jobs will be keen because of the large number of law school graduates entering the market.