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What types of lawyers make the most money?

Do lawyers outside the US make substantially less money than lawyers in the US? Why?

  • In the US, junior lawyers at a big firm make around 100-200K (in USD). Partners at a big law firm on average make 3 or 4 million. How is it like in Europe or Asia? Do you think differences in litigious culture is a possible explanation?

  • Answer:

    If you're talking about corporate lawyers at big firms the answer is that in general lawyers outside the US make a lot less. Take a look at the compensation scales for UK lawyers (http://www.rollonfriday.co.uk/InsideInfo/UKCityFirms/tabid/68/Default.aspx), Australian lawyers (http://www.rollonfriday.co.uk/InsideInfo/AussieFirms/tabid/124/Default.aspx  ) compared to US lawyers (http://abovethelaw.com/2007/01/breaking-simpson-thacher-raises-associate-base-salaries/). Hong Kong pays somewhere between Australia and the UK. In addition, if you are talking about lawyers posted abroad, US lawyers get paid an expat bonus that can be quite substantial (over $100k in addition to their higher base salaries). For partners, there is a lot more variance, but if you look at a list of law firms by profits per partner, other than Slaughter & May (a UK firm), you have to go down to the 30s or so before you get to other non-US firms (the other four Magic Circle firms in the UK), and down to the 50s before you get to firms from other countries. Links to profits-per-partner tables are subscription only, unfortunately, but see http://www.americanlawyer.com/id=1202571229443/The-2012-Global-100%3A-Profits-Per-Partner if you can. Regarding an explanation, most of the most profitable work that firms do is transactional, not litigation. A disproportionate share of transactions are (at least in part) governed by US or UK law, so it's no surprise that US and UK firms capture this work. As for why US law firms might be more profitable, I think this has more to do with how the different law firms in different jurisdictions have evolved. With the exception of Slaughter & May, the other major UK law firms have chosen to focus on size and global reach at the expense of profitability (or so it seems); in the US, there are at least 20 firms that have not expanded widely and have stayed focused on high-margin practices.

Ani Ravi at Quora Visit the source

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For typical 9-5 wage slavery, yes the constitution in the US was written by lawyers therefore it favors lawyers. However being an entrepreneur is the only real way to make wealth. The purpose of a lawyer is to mitigate risk, which is the antithesis of being an entrepreneur. And yes, we don't need 99% of lawyers. Because why are they getting paid 200k and have the power to hire translators to tell us that getting hit by a train is deadly. Only in a lawyer's world does this sign matter. Or the same kind of sign telling us that rocks are dangerous, or that fences should be put up between rocks and the water. We've survived for millions of years without signs telling us that rocks are dangerous. So yeah, please automate lawyers out of existence (except for the forward thinking ones that interpret the constitution as it was intended)

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