Employment

• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that about 16,790 legal assistants worked in Texas in 2009 of the approximately 246,810 employed throughout the country. The largest number of legal assistants in Texas worked in the greater Houston area, where 5,560 were employed in 2009. The next largest number was in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area, with 4,700 legal assistants.
  
  

Salary Range

• Texas legal assistants earned an average salary of $23.84 per hour in 2009, or $49,590 per year. That was nearly the same as the nationwide average for this occupation of $24.08 per hour. The middle 50 percent of Texas legal assistants were making $17.46 to $28.58 per hour, or $36,320 to $59,440 per year. The bottom 10 percent had pay rates of $13.83 per hour and lower, and the top 10 percent were making $34.63 per hour and higher, or $72,020 per year and more.
  
  

Highest-Paying Areas

• The highest average salaries for legal assistants in Texas were in the greater Dallas area, where average pay rates ranged from about $28.60 to $29.50 per hour. Average salaries also were relatively high in the Brownsville-Harlingen area, at $26.21 per hour, the northwestern nonmetropolitan area of the state at $25.14, the Austin-Round Rock area at $24.15 and the greater Houston area at $23.59.
  
  

Other Regions

• The lowest-paying regions of Texas for legal assistants in 2009 were the Gulf Coast nonmetropolitan area at $15.09 per hour and El Paso at $16.48. Legal assistants in most parts of Texas earned salaries in a range from about $17.20 to $21.80 per hour.