How To Become A Legal Adviser: What It Is and Career Path

What is a legal adviser and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Dustin Marlan

The average legal adviser salary is $57,190. The most common degree is a bachelor's degree degree with an law major. It usually takes 2-4 years of experience to become a legal adviser. Legal advisers with a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) certification earn more money. Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 10% and produce 80,200 job opportunities across the U.S.

What general advice would you give to a legal adviser?

Dustin Marlan

Assistant Professor of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This is an exciting time to be a lawyer given advances in technology. Unlike some other fields, law does not appear to be a field that will be “taken over” by generative AI, but rather AI will hopefully make some of the more monotonous work that a lawyer needs to handle less tedious and time-consuming. There should always be a need for the human element in law given the inherent subjectivities in comprehending and interpreting the law. I’m not sure that’s the case with every professional discipline, though, unfortunately.

ScoreLegal AdviserUS Average

Salary

4.5

Avg. Salary $57,190

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

10.0

Growth rate 10%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

2.5

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.31%

Asian 6.48%

Black or African American 5.66%

Hispanic or Latino 7.89%

Unknown 4.39%

White 75.27%

Gender

female 46.92%

male 53.08%

Age - 45

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 45

Stress level

10.0

Stress level is very high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

10.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.9

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a legal adviser

Explore legal adviser education requirements

Most common legal adviser degrees

Bachelor's

47.8 %

Doctorate

27.2 %

Master's

18.2 %

Start to develop specific legal adviser skills

Skills	Percentages
Litigation	9.89%
Legal Advice	9.60%
Legal Research	8.01%
Legal Issues	7.80%
International Law	7.07%

Complete relevant legal adviser training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-2 years on post-employment, on-the-job training. New legal advisers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a legal adviser based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real legal adviser resumes.

Research legal adviser duties and responsibilities

Prepare and distribute payroll manage daily office operations and equipment and maintain supplies for office to run effectively.
Draft and negotiate business-to-business SaaS contracts, non-disclosure agreements, and vendor agreements for domestic and international software platform transactions.
Aid in drafting arbitration reports, discovery requests, and responses to discovery requests.
Monitor issues surrounding corruption, cyber-crime and arbitration.

Prepare your legal adviser resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your legal adviser resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a legal adviser resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable legal adviser resume templates

Build a professional legal adviser resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your legal adviser resume.