Friday, March 4, 2011

How Much Do Lawyers Make?

The ABA Journal teamed up with  William D. Henderson of the Center on the Global Legal Profession at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, to study and report on the wages for lawyers throughout the United States. I think this is an admirable response to a lot of uproar regarding "the lying law schools," but I believe, as some of the comments suggest that this still isn't reporting the true nature of the legal profession. The biggest flaw of the study: "Equity partners and solo practitioners are not included in the survey." Oops.

I think this flaw over-exaggerates the numbers. Sure, I guess if my goal is BigLaw, government, or in-house, these figures should bring some comfort. However, if you're a solo practitioner or equity partner (why isn't BigLaw complaining?) you're screwed. The fact is, there's still a larger portion of the legal profession that is unrepresented in the study. As one commenter states, "The ABA bothers to show this because they want the media to pick it up - they want a counter to all the bad press law schools have been getting, and this gets the fuzzy idea, 'Oh hey, lawyers DO make a lot of money' out there in the world again. It’s an attempt to keep the bubble growing and obfuscate the truth - that law school is a bad investment for almost all students who take out taxpayer backed loans to attend."

Some of the surprising information for me gleaned from the study:  Reno, NV and El Paso, TX, have "unusually" high salaries for relatively small metro markets. Perhaps, if you desire to become an attorney, you should relocate to Huntsville, AL, where lawyers earn $125,000, and the market is small 440 (is that a typo?). Also, isn't the "hot spot" graphic nice? I guess there won't be a rush of lawyer to Montana, North Dakota, or Northern Maine.

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