Allegheny County, Pennsylvania / Public Defender / Legal Secretary 1/
Job-title file
Provide legal advice, draft and review documents, and represent the agency in legal matters.
17 employees hold this title in Public Defender. Median total compensation for the role is $41,185, below the department median of $66,610.
What the records show
How total compensation varies among the 17 people in this role. Even for one job title, pay differs with seniority, step, overtime, and tenure. Each bar is a pay range; the far-right bar collects the highest earners.
Compared with the local labor market
Across all employers in the Pittsburgh, PA area, the median wage for Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants — about 1,450 people — is $47,180. Public Defender pays a median base salary of $41,408 for this role, 12% below that figure — about the 22nd percentile of local pay for the occupation.
The bar is the range of annual wages for Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants across every employer in the Pittsburgh, PA area, from the 10th to the 90th percentile, with the middle 50% highlighted. The marker shows Public Defender’s median base salary for this role. Both figures are base pay only.
And across the country
Nationwide, the median wage for Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants — about 156,280 people — is $55,570. Public Defender’s median base salary is 25% below that national figure, about the 19th percentile of pay for the occupation nationally.
Local and national wages differ for reasons beyond how well a job pays — cost of living, the mix of employers, and local demand for the occupation all move the Pittsburgh, PA range relative to the national one.
Computed over the 13 of 17 people in this role paid at least $25,000in base salary. The rest are part-year or part-time records, whose actual pay isn’t comparable to a full-time annual wage.
Median total compensation for this role at Public Defender is $41,185, which includes overtime and employer-paid benefits. The benchmark above excludes both, so total compensation is deliberately not compared against it.
Benchmark: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025). BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) covers all employers in the area — private, non-profit, and government alike — so this is a comparison against the whole local labor market for the occupation, not against private-sector pay. OEWS wages are straight-time pay and exclude overtime, shift differentials, and employer-paid benefits, so the government figure shown here is base pay on the same basis. Total compensation is not comparable to it. Job titles are matched to the closest standard occupation, so the comparison is between similar work rather than an identical job classification.
Compare jurisdictions
This role is reported in 21 jurisdictions. In Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, the median of $37,763 ranks #14 of 21. See Legal Secretary across all of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania →
Median total compensation for comparable Legal Secretaryroles in other jurisdictions. Titles are matched by normalized name across sources, not identical job classification, and pay is not cost-of-living adjusted. Each bar links to that jurisdiction’s page for the role.
Record list
Page 1
Legal Secretary 1//Public Defender
Source-specific fields
Cecelia D Johnson works as a Legal Secretary 1/ for Public Defender. Their hire date on record is 12/22/1986. Cecelia earned $49,651 in 2025.