Criminal defence expected salary

[toby1994]

I’ve heard that criminal defence lawyers tend to make the least amount of money out of all practise areas and that if you have significant debt, it’s nearly impossible to pursue. As someone who is a 1L and exploring possible practice areas of interest, I’m interested in finding out what kind of salary I would expect to receive as an articling student/junior associate at a criminal defence firm. I’ll have a large amount of debt to pay off and basically want to know if it’s even a possible path to consider. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Avatar Aang]

Which location? And how are your grades? There is a difference between working at Henein Hutchinson and MAG Crown Law Office - Criminal and working for sole practitioners. The top criminal law firms will require you to have very high grades and often you will see appellate/SCC clerkships on their resume. Landing a Crown job is also competitive. If you're just an average student or don't think you will land at the top criminal law firms/Crown offices, then your salary will likely be at the lower end of the range. 

[CleanHands]

Criminal defence is brutal starting out but, just to be clear, there are some bad lawyers who had bad grades (and uncompetitive profiles generally) who make a killing in criminal defence.

The rare Jian Ghomeshis and Meng Wanzhous out there are all going to a few select firms Henein and Peck, and the average defence lawyer has no hope of ever landing such clients. Most criminally accused people are broke (and don't really care about one more conviction) and most of the work is legal aid. Most criminal defence lawyers are fighting over scraps, that's true.

But there are lucrative niches out there like impaired driving (in jurisdictions that haven't moved to an administrative model), where the average accused more closely resembles a middle class person with a bit of money to pay a lawyer and who doesn't have a criminal record and will pay $10,000 to avoid one.

It's a very entrepreneurial field and in most cases business savvy is more important than ability as a lawyer in determining income. Anyways, incomes in the field vary dramatically so there's no simple and easy answer here, other than that it's a challenging but not impossible path to pursue with a heavy debt load (and the first few years will absolutely be brutal and you need to brace yourself for that).

ETA: Expect to make peanuts articling, but if this is what you want to do, don't try to get around that by articling in another area of law and then trying to make the switch to crim defence. In the long run that move doesn't pay off.

Edited September 4, 2021 by CleanHands

[Thrive92]

1 hour ago, CleanHands said:

Criminal defence is brutal starting out

not to be unnecessarily specific, but would you say it’s below the national average earnings? and if so, can you provide possibly a range (ex:20k - 40k)?

i am very interested in vancouver/lower mainland starting earnings, and i’m already expecting minimum hourly wage during articling (in all honesty, i would offer myself for free if i could)

[toby1994]

Thank you for the responses, very insightful. Regarding grades, I have no idea how I’ll do since I’m starting 1L next week. I guess I’ll just focus on my grades for now and it’s nice to know that it wouldn’t be impossible to attain a career in crim defence, it would just be difficult. 

[CleanHands]

On 9/4/2021 at 3:13 PM, Thrive92 said:

not to be unnecessarily specific, but would you say it’s below the national average earnings? and if so, can you provide possibly a range (ex:20k - 40k)?

i am very interested in vancouver/lower mainland starting earnings, and i’m already expecting minimum hourly wage during articling (in all honesty, i would offer myself for free if i could)

UBC's ACE guide provides a range of criminal defence articling salaries of $24,000-$36,000/year for Van/the Lower Mainland, and notes that many criminal defence articling employers will not pay for PLTC fees or salary during PLTC. With that said I do have some friends in the field getting paid slightly above this (around $40k) and getting PLTC and salary during covered.

$40,000-$50,000/year seems more the market rate for articles in Calgary and Edmonton. Alberta Crown Prosecution Service pays $52k for articles (with PREP fees and salary during covered) and there are a few defence lawyers who make a point of paying more than the Crown.

(I don't know about Ontario but fortunately you asked about a location I'm actually familiar with.)

On 9/4/2021 at 11:54 AM, toby1994 said:

 I’m interested in finding out what kind of salary I would expect to receive as an articling student/junior associate at a criminal defence firm.

It occurred to me that I should also mention to you that most criminal defence practices are sole practitioners or very small firms (think a few lawyers) and the majority of criminal defence articling students are not hired back as associates upon completion of articles. It is extremely common for criminal defence lawyers to go solo right after being called. A Calgary-based new call in crim defence recently wrote a LinkedIn post about receiving offers ranging from "$38k/yr (+15% of billing) to $75k/yr (+ scaled % of billing)" and this is someone who had significant relevant prior work experience and who had received a ton of media exposure and had brought in files, so the typical new call in crim defence could expect to be at the lower end of that, barely above articling salary.

There are reasons the crim defence bar lose a lot of people to the Crown but crim lawyers don't move in the other direction too often...

[CleanHands]

On 9/4/2021 at 3:27 PM, toby1994 said:

Thank you for the responses, very insightful. Regarding grades, I have no idea how I’ll do since I’m starting 1L next week. I guess I’ll just focus on my grades for now and it’s nice to know that it wouldn’t be impossible to attain a career in crim defence, it would just be difficult. 

If I can offer one more piece of advice that you did not solicit, it's not to focus on grades to the detriment of relevant volunteer and work opportunities. Law schools offer lots of opportunities to gain experience relevant to criminal defence and you want to get involved in them as soon as you can. Once you start doing a bit of such work you'll find that opens up further opportunities, and that there is no criminal defence lawyer out there that will hire a dean's lister with no criminal experience over an average student who stacked their resume with student legal service volunteering, crim clinics, Innocence Project work, etc. Not to mention that if you like criminal law that stuff will be more fun and rewarding than school work, and if you end up not liking those experiences you will get valuable info and know earlier on not to pursue this.

Edited September 6, 2021 by CleanHands

[PulpFiction]

27 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

 no criminal defence lawyer out there that will hire a dean's lister with no criminal experience over an average student who stacked their resume with student legal service volunteering, crim clinics, Innocence Project work, etc. 

So important for crim. These various experiences - literally everything you listed, plus more -  are the reason I got my articling position after searching for roughly two weeks and sending out about 6-7 applications, and my associate position in about the same time with the same number of applications (both in Toronto at competitive firms). When you build your resume/application package to demonstrate a clear and undeniable interest in criminal law, most employers, in my experience, won't even ask for transcripts. I only got asked for transcripts a few times during articling applications and not once during my associate hunt. Even during the articling hunt, my grades never came up (above average in a few crim classes and pretty average in everything else). I think they just want to verify you did indeed go to law school, and also that your course selection is somewhat criminal law oriented. They all cared about the clinic experience, though. It was always discussed in-depth and resulted in a lot of positive reactions from potential employers. I also recommend taking crim courses with lawyers rather than academics. I'm positive the 3-4 references I have from well-known defence lawyers has, at the very least, gotten my foot in the door and given me opportunities I might not have otherwise had. 

Being honest with you, none of my friends who wanted a position in criminal law struggled to find work. Some ended up at top defence shops, some with the Crown, some at Legal Aid. I can't think of a single friend who stayed unemployed at graduation or for more than a couple months post-grad while looking for associate work. We all focused our efforts on criminal law early on, and it was clear what we wanted to do to anyone interviewing.  

[CleanHands]

23 minutes ago, PulpFiction said:

-Snip-

Absolutely; I wholeheartedly agree. I was similarly a slightly above-average JD student grades-wise (albeit at a good school), but accumulated loads of work, clinical and volunteer experience relevant to criminal law through law school, and ended up with multiple respectable articling offers to choose from, in addition to working during school for great defence lawyers (one of whom ended up getting appointed to the bench), working on an SCC file, and interviewing at the office of a lawyer so prominent he has a wikipedia page and who hires medalists and SCC clerks (didn't end up hiring me after I got on with the Crown, but I was flattered to get the interview). Not trying to brag but rather to emphasize that my experience absolutely aligns with yours. I befriended the other criminal law junkies in law school (who had the CVs to prove it) and as you say, nobody had issues getting articles, including friends that I know had grades in the bottom 10% of the class. I was amazed at how eager the crim bar was to welcome with open arms students who were "the real deal."

Edited September 6, 2021 by CleanHands

[PulpFiction]

13 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

I was amazed at how eager the crim bar was to welcome with open arms students who were "the real deal."

It's a really tight-knit group of lawyers. They're so helpful and willing to offer mentorship if someone is serious about criminal law. Even when I inquired about positions with specific lawyers I wanted to work with and they informed me they had completed hiring/weren't looking for anyone, they always pointed me in the direction of colleagues they knew were looking. 

Some follow up advice I forgot to mention for anyone reading this - join your local criminal law association. In Ontario, the Criminal Lawyers' Association is amazing. They've got a listserv where defence lawyers of all levels of experience ask each other questions and you get to see the thought process that goes into figuring out some of the problems they encounter. I joined as a student in my first month of law school and learned a ton before graduating just from observing. It also helps that they've got a job board exclusively for CLA members. These positions are, for the most part, not advertised anywhere else. Being a member of the organization serves as the first filter to ensure you actually want to do this type of work and have taken steps toward getting involved with the community. 

[TheBarbieDoll]

On 9/4/2021 at 3:01 PM, Avatar Aang said:

Which location? And how are your grades? There is a difference between working at Henein Hutchinson and MAG Crown Law Office - Criminal and working for sole practitioners. The top criminal law firms will require you to have very high grades and often you will see appellate/SCC clerkships on their resume. Landing a Crown job is also competitive. If you're just an average student or don't think you will land at the top criminal law firms/Crown offices, then your salary will likely be at the lower end of the range. 

how much would a top student with top grades make (approx....just to give an idea) at a top criminal law firm/crown offices etc in toronto 

for example henein hutchinson or appellate/scc clerkships like you mentioned

[QMT20]

1 hour ago, TheBarbieDoll said:

how much would a top student with top grades make (approx....just to give an idea) at a top criminal law firm/crown offices etc in toronto 

for example henein hutchinson or appellate/scc clerkships like you mentioned

Appellate clerkships depend on the Court. I think ONCA pays around 75k if you clerk during your articling year and 90k if you clerk after articling. FCA pays 67k for clerks whether or not you articled before clerking. SCC pays 74k for clerks. All of this information is public and you can find it by just checking "clerkship program" on the website for whichever court you're applying to. 

I'm not sure what MAG pays their articling students but I imagine it would be similar to what ONCA pays for clerks who complete their clerkship during their articling year. 

I know a friend who's articling at another "top criminal boutique" in Toronto and I vaguely remember their mentioning the pay was around 50k for articling. Pay could vary between the boutiques though since they're private sector. 

[criminallyminded]

Ontario Crown (MAG) article pays 71k (yearly, prorata on 10m) and they reimburse LSO bar fees ~5k, plus offer 5k stipend. First year calls coming in as Associate Crown Attorney's start at ~92k.

Edited September 8, 2021 by criminallyminded