Legal Recruiting · Texas

The Texas lateral market, in the numbers firms publish.

We track every opening Texas law firms post publicly, and the salary ranges they publish with them. Here is what the market looks like right now, and what it means if you are weighing a move.

Start a confidential conversation How our legal recruiting works →

Open demand

What Texas firms are hiring for today

Openings posted publicly by law firms with Texas offices (July 2026). Postings only show you the visible market; many searches, especially at partner level, never get posted at all.

1,198

Open law-firm postings

573

Attorney roles (associate)

423

Litigation openings

Litigation is more than a third of everything posted. Texas is a litigation market first: litigation openings outnumber corporate roles by well over two to one, with intellectual property third. Houston and Dallas carry most of the volume, with Austin the fastest-growing third market.

Source: Voll Recruiting analysis of publicly posted law-firm openings, July 2026.

Practice areas

Where the demand concentrates

Posted openings by practice area. If your practice sits in a deep column, you have options; if it sits in a thin one, timing and positioning matter more, and that is exactly the situation a recruiter earns their keep in.

Litigation

423 openings

Corporate / transactional

176 openings

Intellectual property

120 openings

Source: Voll Recruiting analysis of publicly posted law-firm openings, July 2026.

Published pay

What Texas postings are offering

Salary ranges taken directly from current public postings. Ranges like these are the floor of a negotiation, not the ceiling; knowing where a specific firm actually lands is the part we do for a living.

Role	Firm · location	Experience	Posted range
Complex commercial litigation associate	Katten Muchin Rosenman · Dallas	3 to 5 years	$270,000 – $385,000
Energy & infrastructure associate	Orrick · Houston / Austin (multi-office)	2 to 9 years	$225,000 – $435,000
Transactional tax senior associate	Latham & Watkins · Austin (multi-office)	4+ years, scaled by class year	$225,000 – $435,000

Source: Salary ranges published in public law-firm job listings, July 2026.

The part postings can't show you

The best Texas moves are rarely the posted ones.

A posting tells you a seat exists. It does not tell you which groups are quietly building, which firms flex on class year, or where your book and background put you at the front of the line. That is the read we give every Texas attorney we work with, confidentially, before anything is sent anywhere.

Get a confidential market read

The desk