Updated October 16, 2026

PERM occupation, SOC 23-1012, #1,374 of 1,410 by filings

Judicial Law Clerks

1,977 H-1B LCAs

Major group: Legal · SOC 23

Weighing an offer for this job?

Where it falls among certified offers, and the four wage levels DOL sets for it by area.

Compare my offer DOL's wage levels for this job

Too few cases for a rate

1 decided filing: too few for an approval rate.

Why

Across every PERM case DOL decided in this window, 3.20% were denied. At that rate a file this size comes back clean most of the time whatever the occupation did, so a percentage would be a fact about how few cases there are. Telling a clean record apart from the field takes about 117 decided cases.

Median wage

$55,286

all PERM $103,272

Filings

#1,374 of 1,410

Approval

Not shown

withheld: 1 decided

Median days

385

middle of 1 decided

What it pays

Where its median offer sits among every occupation, then the whole ladder of certified offers by year and by state.

Position in the field 535 occupations with 30+ decided

Median offered wage

$55,286median of 1 filings, too few decided to rank

$18k $500k

Approval rate

not shownunder 30 decided

49% 100%

Median days to decision

385 daysmiddle of 1 decided, too few to rank

323d 536d

Each bar counts occupations at that value. More

Each bar counts occupations at that value. PERM runs two labour markets through one process, which is why the wage axis is two humps rather than a bell. This occupation has 1 decided cases, so its wage and its median days are marked but left unranked, and no approval rate is drawn at all.

DOL PERM disclosure files

Who files it

The sponsors and firms with the most PERM filings under this code, the places the work sits, and who the workers were.

Who filled these jobs, FY2016 to FY2023

From DOL's old form; the form in use since mid-2023 doesn't carry them. Top six of each.

Country of citizenship

China 6
Colombia 2
Germany 2
India 2
Taiwan 2
Brazil 1

Worker's education

Master's 12
Other 7
Bachelor's 1
Doctorate 1

Visa held when filed

H-1B 11
F-1 5
B-2 1
G-1 1

Schools

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY, THE SCHOOL OF LAW 2
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI SCHOOL OF LAW 2
DEPAUL UNIVERSITY 1
DR. AMBEDKAR GOVT. LAW COLLEGE 1
EMORY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW 1
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW 1

Fields of study

LAW 11
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LAW 2
LAW LLM 2
BANKING, CORPORATE AND FINANCE LAW 1
JURIS DOCTOR DEGREE 1
JURISPRUDENCE JURIS DOCTOR U.S. EQUIVALENT 1

The job itself

What O*NET says the work is, what the market pays it by BLS's survey, its outlook, and DOL's wage levels year by year.

What the job pays outside PERM BLS May 2025

United States
13,290 jobs

$60k$80k$100k

middle half of pay (BLS)
median
10th to 90th percentile
median PERM offer

Market pay and DOL wage levels, by area
Area	BLS median	Level I	Level II	Level III	Level IV
United States	$64,920

How these figures fit together

BLS surveys employers on what they pay everyone in a job; DOL builds its four levels from the same survey a year later (the July 2026 wage year uses BLS's May 2025 estimates). DOL publishes levels by area, not nationally, so the United States line has none. Levels are hourly in DOL's tables; here they're shown a year at 2,080 hours, as DOL computes them. The metros are the ones holding the most of this job's PERM filings, placed by Census's county files.

The block is the middle half of what employers report paying everyone in this job, citizen or not; the ticks under it are DOL's four prevailing wage levels for that metro, the floors a PERM or H-1B offer is held to. More

BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics; DOL OFLC wage tables

What the job is

Assist judges in court or by conducting research or preparing legal documents.

Preparation: Extensive Preparation Needed; O*NET Job Zone 5
DOL's education basis: Doctoral or professional degree; Wage year 2026-27, on DOL's Appendix A list
Jobs, 2025 to 2035: +2.8%; About 1,500 openings a year (BLS)
Typical entry: Doctoral or professional degree; BLS

The work, most important first

Prepare briefs, legal memoranda, or statements of issues involved in cases, including appropriate suggestions or recommendations.
Research laws, court decisions, documents, opinions, briefs, or other information related to cases before the court.
Draft or proofread judicial opinions, decisions, or citations.
Confer with judges concerning legal questions, construction of documents, or granting of orders.
Review complaints, petitions, motions, or pleadings that have been filed to determine issues involved or basis for relief.
Keep abreast of changes in the law and inform judges when cases are affected by such changes.

The education workers in it report

High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED)

7%
First Professional Degree - awarded for completion of a program that: requires at least 2 years of college work before entrance into the program, includes a total of at least 6 academic years of work to complete, and provides all remaining academic requirements to begin practice in a profession.

17%
Doctoral Degree

52%

Titles people use for it

Judicial Assistant, Judicial Clerk, Judicial Law Clerk, Law Clerk, Appellate Law Clerk, Career Judicial Law Clerk, Career Law Clerk, Law Researcher.

Related jobs: Lawyers, Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates, Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers, Paralegals and Legal Assistants, Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners.

This section includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database and O*NET OnLine by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. PERM Tracker has modified some of this information (the shares are rounded and only the top tasks are shown); what changed. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.

Against other jobs

Where this sits in the ranking

Ranked 1,374 of 1,410 by volume: 1,373 filed at least as many filings, and 36 filed no more.

Just above: Care Giver 1 filings
Just below: Grinding and Polishing Workers, Hand 1 filings

Other legal roles

Occupations sharing this one's SOC major group, which is carried in the first two digits of the code. More

Occupations sharing this one's SOC major group, which is carried in the first two digits of the code. Wages inside a group still swing hard, because the group holds every seniority level and every metro.

The same job on H-1B

1,977 certified H-1B labor condition applications for this occupation since FY2020, offering a median of $65,000 a year; the middle half ran $55,120 to $84,240. By state and year in the salary explorer.

Notes on these numbers

Reading the wage

A floor, not a salary survey: every level and metro mixed. DOL's four wage levels for this job, by area.

What the median is

The median wage employers committed to in federal filings for this occupation. It mixes every experience level and every metro, and it's a floor: the employer must offer at least the prevailing wage DOL determines for the occupation, level and county. Across all PERM filings the middle half of offered wages runs $45,178 to $141,357, so a figure inside that band is unremarkable whichever occupation it belongs to. The levels page reads DOL's OFLC wage search live.

What these numbers don't say

4 notes

The code is the identity: This one is SOC 23-1012. Two SOC codes can carry the same job title, so a title that looks duplicated on the ranking is two different occupations. Match on the code when you're checking a specific filing.
A median isn’t an offer: It's the middle of all 1 wages committed to for this occupation across the country, entry level and principal alike. The same role's medians swing hard by worksite, which the state map shows directly.
Approval isn’t about the occupation: The denial rate moves with what happened in the filing rather than with the job title, so nothing here is a property of Judicial Law Clerks. The measured factors are on the denial risk page, published as separate rates.
Nothing here is pending: All 1 counted here carry a decision date, because every case in DOL's disclosure files does, so a case still waiting is in none of them. Where the queue stands today is on the processing times page.

The window these figures cover: DOL's PERM disclosure files for fiscal years 2024 to 2026, through the third quarter of 2026, 373,939 decided cases. Nothing pending is counted here. How each figure is built

Weighing an offer?

Compare it against this median, then check the state map, where the same occupation's medians swing hard by worksite.

Setting one?

All 1,410 occupations sort together on the wages page, and denial rates show how outcome moves with the offered wage.

Filings newer than DOL's last published file can't be attributed to this occupation until DOL publishes them. The live list on the case search page carries them by employer.

Case data: DOL quarterly disclosure files (flag.dol.gov) · data through Jun 30, 2026 · quarterly

Employers and firms: Derived from DOL's disclosure files · data through Jun 30, 2026 · rebuilt with each quarterly load

O*NET occupation data: O*NET Database, USDOL/ETA (onetcenter.org) · data through Aug 16, 2026 · twice a year

BLS market pay: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (bls.gov) · data through May 31, 2025 · yearly, each spring

BLS employment projections: BLS Employment Projections (bls.gov) · data through Dec 31, 2025 · yearly, each autumn

DOL wage tables: DOL OFLC wage data downloads (flag.dol.gov) · data through Jul 1, 2026 · yearly, each july

What each source includes

Case data: Decided PERM cases only. A case still waiting isn't in here, so counts and durations describe finished cases.

Employers and firms: Employers, law firms and occupations ranked from decided cases only.

O*NET occupation data: What O*NET says each occupation is and takes: its description, tasks, Job Zone and the education workers report. A description of the job everywhere, not of any one employer's opening.

BLS market pay: What employers report paying everyone in each job, nationally, by state and by metro, from BLS's yearly survey (May of the year named). Citizens and immigrants alike; not PERM offers.

BLS employment projections: BLS's ten-year projection of each job's employment and yearly openings, and the entry education it calls typical. A projection, not a count.

DOL wage tables: The four prevailing wage levels DOL publishes for every job in every area, each wage year from 2021-22, as DOL's own tables print them. The floors an offer is held to, not what anyone was paid.

Cite this page

Waiting on a PERM case?

When it'll likely be decided
An email when DOL moves it