What is the average salary of a lawyer in South Africa?

Could differences in lawyer salary be a metric on how just the justice system of a country is?

• For the justice system to be just it should be objective and not dependent on humans. If this where so, no lawyer could be better than any other and since no-one would be preferable the market would set their salaries to the same amount. I'm not saying anything about the laws being just, which is another question, only the system. The difference between this approach and trying to measure how many people that bought their way out of jail is that the latter is very hard to actually measure. One could of course try to correlate people in jail to their income but this could be explained by other factors too (perhaps rich people commit less crimes since they already have everything they need). The advantages to look at lawyer salary is that it only rely on the simple mechanisms of a free market.

• Answer:

  No. The premise of the question is wrong on so many things. First, here are a few of the many factors that determine how a lawyer's compensation is determined: The economic conditions in the local area -- generally and with respect to people in the particular industry or area in which the lawyer practices The payment capability of the lawyer's clients How much debt from law school the lawyer has yet to pay off How much debt from other sources the lawyer has Whether the lawyer is charging hourly, on a fixed basis, on a hybrid basis, or on some other basis How and whether the lawyer's income is diversified between hourly, fixed-rate and contingency case work (the latter of which are high risk, high reward gambles) Whether the lawyer feels like giving a discount for any reason to a particular client Whether the client has aggressively negotiated a discount on any of the dozens of line item charges on the lawyer's monthly invoice (from the lawyer's labor to office supplies, paralegal charges, photocopying etc.) Whether the lawyer is trying to save up money to be able to have children, afford a home, or anything else Whether the lawyer is a sole practitioner (who can charge what he wants) or is instead a partner in a multi lawyer firm where partners expect a certain return on their investment in the lawyer Whether the lawyer is an associate (who cannot control what her labor costs) or a partner (who has more control but not unfettered control) Whether the client and lawyer have agreed to performance bonuses for various achievements (not permissible in all types of legal work) How skilled the lawyer is How skilled the lawyer's past clients believe she is (rightly or wrongly) What the lawyer personally believes the market will bear What competing lawyers charge So: above is what you seem to call the "simple mechanisms of the free market." It does not look simple to me.