The Lawyer Average: An Illuminating Look into the Legal Profession

The legal profession is one that has long been associated with numerous myths, perceptions, and misconceptions regarding salaries, workload, and overall job satisfaction. Common stereotypes include the image of wealthy, high-profile attorneys working in lavish offices or hardworking public defenders juggling caseloads. So, what is the ‘lawyer average’, and how does it portray a more nuanced and accurate depiction of the profession? This article takes a comprehensive look at the average incomes and hours worked by lawyers, with a particular focus on the personal injury field.

Firstly, it is essential to understand the factors that impact the earnings of a lawyer. These include the lawyer’s years of experience, the level of specialization, the nature of the employer, the city or region where they operate, and more. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for lawyers was approximately $126,930 in 2020. However, this does not provide the full picture as wages can vary greatly within the profession.

Personal injury law is one of the most varied fields in terms of its earning potential. Personal Injury Lawyers Search for avenues to best represent their clients and secure the most favorable compensation, as their earnings are often tied to the successful settlement of a case. On average, though, personal injury lawyers make $73,000 to $163,000 per year, with some high-profile cases skyrocketing these earnings even further.

Now, let’s turn to the average workload. Often, the public perception is that lawyers work incredibly long hours, and in some cases, this is valid. A 2018 survey conducted by Clio found that the average lawyer spends just over 40% of their day on billable hours, which equates to around 2.5 to 3 hours on a typical 8-hour workday. The remaining time is often filled with administrative tasks and business development activities. Thus, does not necessarily translate to leisurely hours, as a significant portion of non-billable time could still be considered ‘work’.

Moreover, lawyers in certain fields may find their workload to be above average. For instance, lawyers who conduct a Personal Injury Lawyers Search to find clients often have to spend a significant chunk of their time on client acquisition and case research. Therefore, their actual billable hours might be lower, but their total work hours could be much higher.

Lastly, job satisfaction is a big part of any profession. A survey conducted in 2020 by the American Bar Association found that 76% of respondents reported being somewhat or very satisfied with their decision to become a lawyer. Personal injury lawyers expressed higher levels of satisfaction given the nature of their work, which often involves helping individuals in their hours of need. This suggests that although the ‘lawyer average’ workload can be significant, and the compensation can be highly variable, many lawyers still find a significant degree of fulfillment in their work.

Hopefully, with a deeper understanding of the ‘lawyer average’ across different aspects, it is easier to have an accurate picture of this noble profession beyond the usual stereotypes. After all, the world of law is as diverse as those who practice it.

Author: Mathias B. Freese

Publisher: Hats Off Books

ISBN: 1-58736-404-2

The following review was contributed by: NORM GOLDMAN: Editor of Bookpleasures &CLICK TO VIEW Norm Goldman’s Reviews

To read Norm’s Interview with Mathias B. Freese, author of The i Tetralogy, CLICK HERE

Is it possible to write an historical fiction of the Holocaust that would not diminish its importance, but rather provide us with another route by which we approach it?

This is a question that first crossed my mind, when I started to read Matias B. Freese’s The i Tetralogy.

As Freese states, and I tend to agree, the Holocaust is the single most important human event in world history. “It created a lens through which we can understand ourselves culturally, anthropologically, and sociologically.”

However, if we express ourselves through fiction, can we truly grasp an inmate’s desire to survive? Can we fully understand the inmate’s statement, “Resistance is not survival-that is for civilian populations, who have all the clues and signals that they are still civilized. They can resist. Here, resistance is a sentence of death, a bereft wind that blows across the camp.”

Is it possible to comprehend through the voices of fictional characters what primordial instinct made these beasts so passionately anti-Semitic, as they rationalize their actions by arguing that how, when, and they kill, or not, cannot be understood by vermin.

After reading The i Tetralogy, I will admit that these and many more of my queries have been more than adequately addressed, as this book is a rarity-not only for its high caliber of writing, but for its painful questioning and insightful analysis of Nazi atrocities.

Many of the book’s themes have been explored elsewhere, however, Freese’s strength lies in mounting a very exhaustive and meticulous rendering into the psyches of all three of his fictional characters, no doubt in large part attributable to his skills as an analytically trained and insight-oriented psychotherapist.

Freese succinctly sums up the Tetralogy as being an inner dialogue about the most significant event in human history, as he sees it.

He succeeds in painting emotionally charged portraits of his three characters, which give the book real depth. We read about Conrad, the camp guard’s son, who struggles to come to terms with himself, after learning of his father’s appalling past; Gunther, the hideous camp guard who rationalizes with his dribble and psychobabble logic; the victim, who describes the Germans as creatures from hell, devising, cruel, and demonic tortures for the Jews.

Moreover, Freese’s incendiary voice gives his readers a perceptive grasp of the enormity of the crimes and the bestiality of the Nazi regime, although I must admit that many of the horrific scenes would probably be regarded as overkill, and from time to time, I was forced to take a breather.

Most of us have trouble understanding how humans could perpetuate the heinous crimes committed during the Holocaust. Were Hitler’s henchmen mad or inherently evil?

When you read the camp guard’s self-analysis, you immediately become aware that he does not admit to feeling shame or remorse. Au contraire, he is very proud of his monstrous crimes, as he explains, “the Jew is to be processed. It is an assembly line. Consider it an industry, not a back-alley mugging.”

What is most disturbing is that many of these sub-human creatures were able to blend into American society after the war, where they go unseen and unnoticed, as was the case of Gunther. Gunther fittingly sums it up when he asserts, “Good Americans are much like Good Germans: as long as I take care of my lawn, bag the cuttings neatly for garbage pickup, and replace the siding every decade or so and gladly hand out Halloween korn like Gabby Hayes, I’m one of the good guys.”

The i Tetralogy is more than just another story about the Holocaust. It is a stark haunting portrait of a nation gone mad, and a reminder of the horrors that we sometimes take for granted and wish to sweep under the carpet.