Why Do Lawyers Earn So Much?

In truth, lawyers earn much less on average than most people think they do. While it’s true that the top lawyers earn exorbitant salaries, and even fairly successful lawyers earn quite a bit, many lawyers earn relatively little when compared to other professional fields. In fact, a number of lawyers graduate from law school with no job in the field of law, and so are forced to either try to make their own way in private practice, or else to work another job while they struggle to find work at a firm. Law school itself is incredibly competitive, and how students perform has a direct bearing on how much those future lawyers earn later in life. Because law schools track their students so closely, law firms looking to hire can hire directly based on what percentile the student ranked in their class. This means that the top firms in top cities tend to accept only those lawyers who did very well, while those who fell in the lower percentiles of their class may be lucky to find work at any ...  more