How much do lawyers get paid?

How much do lawyers get paid or any facts about lawyers?

• im doing a report and any intresting facts about lawyer would be great thanks

• Answer:

  Ok, some interesting things about lawyers pay -- it has significantly gone down along with the public's perception of the legal profession. While other professionals, like doctors, have salaries that keep up with inflation, lawyer's pay is not. In the 1950s & 60s the legal profession was a small segment of educated people who had jobs that were secure and paid good money. The lawyer was portrayed on TV as a person who had a real good job. Beginning with Perry Mason, the lawyer was shown as somone who carried a certain amount of clout, helped his fellow man, and did not worry about putting food on the table. Every lawyer had designer suits, drove expensive cars, and had a really good life. The lawyer had a job that was financially secure and respected. Who wouldn't want that. Enter the late 1960s into 1980s when disposable income increased. Now, law school was not just for the rich, everyone could afford it or at least take student loans. About that time law schools stopped being run for the good of the profession and began being run FOR PROFIT. In the 1980s law schools made a decision to accpet more students. It was no longer so difficult to get accepted into law school, class size increased, evening division was created, and the structure of the law class was less to 'know the profession' and more 'to just pass the bar exam'. So more people go to law school and more pass the bar exam. What that did was produce (and still producing) more lawyers than lawyer jobs, more lawyers than clients have a need for. In Illinois we have more attorneys than doctors -- how sad. Now the graduating law student comes out of law school with huge debt from student loans and no guaranteed job. Many of my classmates from law school gave up looking for a job where they could use their education and took anything in order to take care of their family. About 2 years ago the American Bar Assoc did a survey of lawyers pay. One of the shocking thing was that $40,000 was the average starting salary. While that salary may sound good consider that it comes after 3 years of expensive graduate education and usually with triple that amount in student loans. Go to www.abanet.org that is the American Bar Assoc website, they have lots of info.