This tracker monitors the number of in-house counsel in the United States based on publicly available data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Number of Lawyers by Type
The interactive chart below provides the number of in-house counsel, government lawyers, and lawyers employed at law firms since 2008, as well as the total number of lawyers in the US.
In-house Counsel Population by US State
Hover over the map to see the estimate number of in-house counsel in each U.S. state in 2023, or sort and filter the table below to dive into more refined statistics of how the in-house population has changed in the 2017–2023 period.
NOTE: To create these visuals, ACC calculates an estimate of the number of in-house counsel in the United States by deducting the number of lawyers who work in law firms (i.e., legal services) and those who work in the government to the total number of lawyers in the country. The assumption that we make is that if a lawyer does not work in a law firm or in the government, then it works in-house.
The calculation is as follows:
Number of in-house counsel = Total number of lawyers – lawyers in law firms – lawyers in the government