As of Oct 6, 2026, our inventory holds 168 open attorney postings that are either fully remote or telework eligible, and 0.6% of them are fully remote. In the last 30 days, 118 new attorney postings have appeared. Those figures are a count, not an estimate: every day we pull the current federal listings from the USAJOBS API, keep the ones that allow remote work or telework, and tag each by occupational category. The attorney category is the one this page describes, and the numbers on it refresh with each daily rebuild, so they can be different tomorrow. The rest of this guide explains what the data shows about federal legal work, and how the hiring process differs from the one most lawyers know.
What government attorney roles involve
Federal attorney positions span most of the practice areas you would find in a large firm, plus several you would not: litigation support, regulatory and compliance review, contract and procurement law, immigration law, labor and employment law, intellectual property, benefits adjudication, and general counsel work supporting an agency’s day-to-day operations. The mix depends heavily on the hiring agency. An attorney at a regulatory agency spends the week reading rules and drafting guidance; one at an agency that adjudicates benefits reviews case files and writes decisions; one supporting an enforcement program prepares matters for litigation. The job title on the announcement is usually just “Attorney” or “Attorney-Adviser,” so the agency and the duties section tell you far more than the title does.
Much of substantive legal work — research, writing, case review, document analysis, and communication with clients and stakeholders — happens independently of any particular building. Court appearances, in-person hearings, and the handling of classified material are the usual reasons a legal role requires regular office presence, and not every government legal position involves those. That is why attorney work appears in our inventory at all, and why the split between fully remote and telework-eligible postings is worth reading closely.
Fully remote or telework eligible?
Two tiers decide where you can live. A posting is fully remote when the agency marks it remote on USAJOBS, so the work can be done from an approved location anywhere in the country. A posting is telework eligible when it carries a specific duty station and the agency lets you work from home part of the time. We never merge the two into a vague “remote-friendly” label, because the difference is whether you must live near a particular office. Here is today’s split across every attorney posting we hold:
The share you see here is the one to set your expectations by. If fully remote is non-negotiable, the fully remote list filtered to attorney work is your whole market. If you already live near a federal legal office, or can move to one, the telework tier opens up everything else in the category, and the remote vs. telework guide explains what a telework agreement does and does not promise.
Which agencies post attorney jobs
Attorney postings are not spread evenly across government. The agencies with the most open attorney postings in our inventory right now are:
- Offices, Boards and Divisions 17 listings
- Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys and the Office of the U.S. Attorneys 14 listings
- Federal Trade Commission 8 listings
- National Labor Relations Board 8 listings
- Office of the Solicitor 8 listings
- U.S. Courts 7 listings
- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 6 listings
- Air Force Materiel Command 5 listings
Each name links to that agency’s hub, where you can see every listing we hold for it, legal and otherwise, and judge whether its attorney postings are a steady stream or a single hiring round. Across the category, 61 distinct agencies have an attorney posting open today. The list shifts as announcements open and close, so an agency missing from it this week may lead it next month. Agencies with large in-house legal offices, such as those handling benefits claims, immigration, tax, or regulatory enforcement, tend to post repeatedly; smaller agencies post occasionally and for a short window.
What they pay
Advertised pay on attorney postings we hold currently runs from $63,795 to $272,407 a year, with a typical figure of $154,439. The GS grades advertised span 11–15.
A word on “typical,” because it is doing real work here. A federal announcement advertises a pay range, not a single salary, and the range can be wide when a job is open at several grades. For each posting we take the midpoint of its advertised range; the typical figure is the median of those midpoints across every attorney posting in the inventory. The low and high ends are the lowest and highest bounds advertised on any posting in the category, so they describe the edges of the market, not what most applicants are offered. Postings that publish no usable pay figure are left out of all three numbers.
Attorney pay follows the General Schedule at most agencies, but some agencies pay their lawyers on their own systems, and the grade range above counts only postings on the GS ladder. Read the pay section of each announcement rather than assuming the GS pay scale guide maps directly, and remember that fully remote employees are generally paid on the locality table for where they live.
How fast new ones appear
Posted in the last 30 days: 118 attorney postings. In the last 7 days: 41. Most recent attorney posting date: Oct 6, 2026.
Set the 30-day figure beside the total at the top of the page and you have the pace of the legal market: how much of the current pool arrived within the past month. Attorney postings close on their own schedule, often after a short open period, and a closed posting drops out of our inventory at the next daily refresh. Checking once a month means missing announcements that opened and closed in between. Look at the attorney category every few days, newest first, with your application materials ready.
How federal attorney hiring differs from private practice
A few things surprise attorneys coming from private practice or clerkships.
- Attorney positions are in the excepted service. Lawyers in the federal 0905 Attorney series are hired outside the competitive examining process, which means each agency sets its own application procedure within OPM’s rules. Some announcements ask for a writing sample and references at the outset; others run a short, resume-only first stage. Read the “How to apply” section of every announcement as if it were new, because it usually is.
- The resume still has to be a federal resume. Excepted service does not mean informal. Bar admission, the jurisdiction, and the date of admission must be stated outright. Relevant post-bar experience must be described in enough detail for a reviewer to match it to the announcement’s qualifications. The federal resume guide covers the format; the short version is that a two-page firm resume is almost always too thin.
- Security clearance requirements vary widely. Some roles require none; others require a substantial background investigation before you can start. The announcement states the requirement, and a role that needs a clearance you do not hold will take longer to begin.
- Timelines are long by firm standards. Even a quick excepted-service process can run several months from closing date to offer. The application timeline guide sets out what to expect at each stage.
What qualifications typically look like
Federal attorney postings generally require a J.D. from an accredited law school and active bar membership. The specific jurisdiction varies: many announcements accept any active state bar, while some specify a particular bar or the bar of the highest court of a state or territory. Positions above the entry grade require a defined amount of relevant post-bar legal experience, usually stated in years, and often subject-matter experience tied to the agency’s mission, such as immigration law for an immigration agency or procurement law for an acquisition office. Law clerk positions, which do not require bar admission, are posted under a different series and are not counted on this page.
How to search for these
Start at the attorney category hub, which lists every open attorney posting we hold with its tier, agency, and advertised pay, refreshed daily from USAJOBS. If you need fully remote work, read the fully remote list and look for attorney titles; it is the complete set of fully remote postings in our inventory, not a sample. If you can live near a federal office, the telework list adds every telework-eligible posting you would otherwise filter out. The agency hubs linked in the list above show each agency’s full inventory, and every listing on the site links to the original USAJOBS announcement, which is where you apply.