About
forty percent of all lawyers are solo practitioners. Another large percentage of all lawyers find
themselves in very small partnerships, e.g., two or three lawyers, which is
essentially the same thing as being a solo practitioner. So if you go to law school, the odds are great
that this is where you’ll end up.
Therefore, before you take the plunge and spend all that money on
tuition, and yet another three years sitting in a classroom, you should take a
look at what kind of money you can expect to earn. Now, I’ve written several times about the incredibly embarrassingly low pay for solo lawyers, including here and here. But, as the law professors like to say, that
was just “anecdotal.” So here’s some
better salary data.
In The Collapsing Economics of Solo Legal Practice, Paul Campos graphically demonstrates
that average solo pay has actually fallen from $75,000 to $50,000 in the last
twenty-five years. But how does that
compare to the average American worker? Many
solos complain that car mechanics and plumbers make more than lawyers – but is that
true? It probably is. In 1988, solo lawyers made about 190 percent
of the average American wage. That’s not
bad, but not great, considering that law school requires seven years of
education and many jobs included in the “average American wage” require nothing
beyond high school.
But since
1988, things have gotten even worse. In 2012,
solo lawyer pay slipped to about 110 percent (from 190 percent) of the average
American wage. But because the “average American
wage” includes part-time workers, fast-food workers, and others who don’t have
to spend seven years and a quarter-million dollars to listen to professors,
things are far worse than even those numbers would suggest.
So,
in short, if one of your goals is to make a lot of money,
or even a good wage, or even a wage better than the average American worker,
you might want to consider a path other than law school.
A few years ago the average Wisconsin attorney made 45,000 dollars per year. The pro se movement;big firm advertisement;and our own public image hasn't helped. The fact that we are saturated with attorneys has contributed to the decline in attorney salaries. The answers are illusive,but prosecution of the false advertisers might help.A re people get the point that the law is difficult and demanding.Some of my suggestions might sound cruel,but high standards mean higher salaries.I am familiar with attorneys who call themselves trial lawyers in the yellow pages and who never have tried a single case. We have OLAR who never enforces rules against the elite attorneys.We don't support the good guys in our field and then want the public to respect what we do.Salaries reflect the way the public values us and our services.
ReplyDeleteWalter, I hear you. Similarly, lawyers often use the word "aggressive" in their advertising, yet some of these lawyers haven't tried a case in years, decades, or at all.
DeleteI think the problem is systemic. Greedy colleges abetted by the ABA recklessly expanded the number of accredited law schools at the same time we hit one of the worst recessionary troughs in modern history. Backstopped federal government financing doled out without restrictions save for their non-dischargeability in bankruptcy fed the avaricious academic monster. And self delusion, magical thinking and ignorance kept the matriculations high despite a growing lawyer glut and the emerging radical transformations in how the law is practiced. It is not a matter of lawyers being disrespected by the public. That disrespect has been around since the creation of lawyers. The pro se movement, such as it is, persists because most Americans can't afford to pay for legal representation. And with unserviceable six figure debts to pay, new graduates can't afford to realistically help stem the pro se tide. Were it only so simple that 'higher standards' translated into higher salaries.
ReplyDeleteGood call, Mo. "Magical thinking," a/k/a "the special snowflake syndrome." And of course the schools fed this monster. Some were even sued for providing misleading employment data, although most cases (except some in California) were dismissed. If memory serves, some courts held that schools' employment data were so obviously false, that no special snowflake could have reasonably relied upon them. That might be a legal defense, but I wouldn't take much pride in that victory if I were a dean at the defendant-law school!
DeleteAnd then you had the knuckle-headed ABA President a few years ago blaming the law students for letting themselves get mislead! Said Bill Robinson,"It's inconceivable to me that someone with a college education, or a graduate-level education, would not know before deciding to go to law school that the economy has declined over the last several years and that the job market out there is not as opportune as it might have been five, six, seven, eight years ago."
DeleteSee http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/05/us-usa-lawyers-jobless-idUSTRE80403K20120105
and my own post at https://lawmrh.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/oblivious-aba-president-blames-law-students-for-going-to-law-school-in-a-declining-economy/