How much do lawyers earn?

In each university there is a career guidance center. And in each counseling center there is usually a stack of white notebooks with laminated sheets showing a list of occupations. Each occupation will include the average salary, education requirements, a brief job description, average hours worked per week, etc. From my personal experience, the information contained in those books is not even close to the truth. And as far as the legal profession is concerned, they are dead wrong!

Imagine if you went to your counselor on your college campus and asked about a promising career in teaching high school algebra. His career counselor pulls out one of those thick white folders and explains that to become a California high school algebra teacher he will need a Ph.D. degree which will require an additional 3 years of study after his undergraduate degree. On top of that, he precisely explains that to go to one of these universities you will have to take a rigorous entrance exam and you will accumulate more than $100,000 in student loans. And after you graduate, you’ll have to take a rigorous three-day “teachers bar exam” before you can start submitting your resumes. And by the way, once you’re an officially licensed California teacher, you’re also bound by strict rules about how you teach. If you lie on a resume, cheat on your taxes, screw up a student’s grade, or upset a parent, you’ll be immediately suspended for six to twelve months and face a possible lifetime ban. And during this time period, you will not be able to accept teaching work at any California high school.

Yes, you know it’s going to be a tough road, but you ask your career counselor, “How much does the average California lawyer make?” His answer: About $30,000 a year minus student loan payments. But what about all those lawyers I see on TV driving BMWs? Well, unfortunately, Hollywood exaggerates. What about your next door neighbor who practices wills and trusts? His house is in foreclosure and he lives off his credit cards and pity money from his wife’s parents. What about that article he saw in Time magazine that listed the average salary for a lawyer at $125,000 per year? Trust me, we don’t know where they get those numbers from either. (We suspect law schools deliberately feed those numbers to unsuspecting journalists to increase demand for law school applications.)

California lawyers are not rich. They are poor. They are broke. Many have recently filed for bankruptcy. Some have had their homes repossessed (see the GQ magazine article titled “The New Economy. Whatever Happened to the Neighbors” by Charles Bowden). Some lawyers in California are now delivering pizzas for Domino’s. Many attorneys in California live on food stamps. And in some cases, some lawyers in California are homeless and living in their cars.

How is this possible? Aside from the bad economy, the biggest reason is three letters: UPL (Unlicensed Practice of Law). Technically, it is illegal to practice law without a license. However, the reality is that the law is never applied. It is a myth that you need to be a lawyer to practice law these days. You do not believe me? Find a local phone book and search for the term “Immigration Consultants.” I guarantee you that every single one of those people you see there is practicing law without a license. It is not uncommon these days for paralegals to appear in court for their clients. Insurance agents write sales contracts for their clients. Large corporations practice law without a license with impunity. We have also noticed that in various telephone directories, many non-lawyers who have never even set foot in a law school classroom now advertise themselves as “Lawyers.” They do so with such brazenness that their brazen actions seem to indicate that they have guarantees that they will never be prosecuted.

Although no official statistics exist, it is safe to say that in the State of California at least 60% of all legal services are provided illegally by unlicensed individuals who have never set foot on a law school campus. Some have never even set foot on a college campus. Keep this fact in mind and you can quickly see why there is simply no money for lawyers in California. Want to practice law without going through the hassle of a worthless $100,000 education? Just skip law school altogether, take out an ad in your local phone book, and hang out. It is illegal? Yes, but you’ll be in good company.

And what are the benefits of practicing law without a license? Well, for starters, you won’t have to worry about being suspended or disbarred for “lying” on your resume. No, that is not an exaggeration. In the summer of 2009, the California State Bar suspended an attorney for lying on his resume for 6 to 12 months. You can literally lie about being a lawyer, and the State Bar of California will not do anything about it because it is outside of their jurisdiction.

So, to summarize, if you’re looking for an exciting career as a lawyer and you don’t mind earning less than a high school teacher, you don’t mind facing imminent and imminent suspensions and disbarments, you don’t mind a $100,000 student loan, and you don’t mind mind working 80 hours a week in a career with the highest rate of depression, drug and alcohol abuse, then law school is for you. However, if you’re sane like the rest of society, then a job flipping burgers at McDonald’s makes more sense. At least you’ll get some much-needed sleep at night.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *