Boston Law Firm $10,000 a Year Salary

[ichy]

How many people with a serious dental or legal problem are going to price shop? Next to none.

Plenty of business are, and most legal work is for commercial transactions.

If you're facing capital murder charges then yeah you'll spend every last penny to get the best lawyer you can find, but if you're doing a real estate deal then you shop around.

 

[shortylickens]

So how do they get away with paying well below minimum wage at $4.80 hr?

Well, at least they're opening up more room for your precious illegals.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally Posted by dmcowen674
So how do they get away with paying well below minimum wage at $4.80 hr?

Well, at least they're opening up more room for your precious illegals.

???

Bush & the Republicans are the ones that ramped up bringing in the illegals for labor resources so what are you talking about?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

If there are so many dentists and lawyers, why does their price not drop? What am I missing here?

That's a good question. Basically, legal work is labor-intensive. It takes time to do the work and you have to pay for it. Secondly, becoming a lawyer is very expensive both in time and money--7 years of college education.

Lawyers also have business expenses such as office rent, legal research costs, bar dues, continuing legal education expenses, wardrobe, court costs, and advertising.

Now, of course, you don't want to go to the lawyer who cuts down on these expenses by working out of his home do you? And you don't want to bring your case to the lawyer with little experience or who trained himself and is only a couple years out of law school, do you? You want a "real" lawyer who received mentorship while working at established law firms (after he graduated) and who drives a fancy car and who has a nice office with an actual secretary. Well, you gotta pay for that.

The other thing to realize is that just because a lawyer charges $X/hour does not mean that he actually earns $X/hour for 2000 hours/year. Instead it's only for the hours billed. Let's suppose that a solo who's just getting by bills 1000 hours for the year. Those 1000 billed hours need to cover all of the business expenses while also providing some compensation.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Please, wont somebody think of the poor lawyers? 😀

The victims are often not merely the "poor lawyers" but the "poor law school graduates" who are never able to become actual lawyers. (Lawyers do legal work; if you work as a waiter at a restaurant you're not a lawyer even if you've passed the Bar Exam.)

What's happening is that bright ambitious young people who have been indoctrinated throughout childhood and early adulthood with the propaganda that higher education guarantees at least a solid middle class career end up going to law school and burdening themselves with (today) $150,000+ of student loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Note that almost all of the law schools provide outright fraudulently misleading employment statistics. ("92% of our graduates were employed after graduation. Uh--no--perhaps 92% of the small percentage of people who responded to your employment survey, and the majority were not working in jobs that require a law degree.) They also end up overqualified and unemployable for other jobs. (Some people call it the "Scarlet JD".)

It's difficult to have sympathy for lawyers, which is perhaps the most hated profession. However, consider having sympathy for young people who have been victims of the "law school scam". They just wanted to be able to earn an honest living by providing legal services, and for this their lives are destroyed and/or irreparably damaged.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

This is an outlier. For the most part lawyers have returned to the models and bottles club pre-recession.

It isn't an outlier at all. In fact, the "bottles and models" club only existed for a small percentage of lawyers pre-recession. The legal field has been heavily over-glutted for at least three decades. Over the past decade, ever since the Dot.com crash, even lawyers at large firms have been affected by financial stresses. Businesses don't want to pay as much for legal services as they did before and they scrutinize their bills more closely. Consequently, over the past decade many large firms have engaged in associate layoffs, fired partners, and have dramatically reduced the number of new graduates hired.

 

[ichy]

Part of the reason that law school is a scam is that it should be possible to do a lot of legal work with something less than seven years of undergrad and law school education. Things like wills, real estate transactions & the like should be doable with less training than lawyers currently get. Also, law school does very little to teach people to practice law in the real world. It's a pathetic scam.

 

[shortylickens]

Yeah over the past few years my moms law firm has laid off about 3/4 of its attorneys and 9/10 of the paralegals.

 

[momeNt]

It isn't an outlier at all. In fact, the "bottles and models" club only existed for a small percentage of lawyers pre-recession. The legal field has been heavily over-glutted for at least three decades. Over the past decade, ever since the Dot.com crash, even lawyers at large firms have been affected by financial stresses. Businesses don't want to pay as much for legal services as they did before and they scrutinize their bills more closely. Consequently, over the past decade many large firms have engaged in associate layoffs, fired partners, and have dramatically reduced the number of new graduates hired.

Yea I was only joking. Law school isn't a good bet right now unless you are getting a full ride and willing to put in the work to get in the top 10% of your class of a top tier 2 or t14 school I would think, even then, 3 years of deferred salary makes it hard to justify even if its free.