I mean, you can say the same about plumbers, to an extent. Many charge $100-200 an hour, more for the first hour, plus travel fee and service charge, and may sk

I mean, you can say the same about plumbers, to an extent. Many charge $100-200 an hour, more for the first hour, plus travel fee and service charge, and may skim a profit on the parts they use as well. Either you're an entrepreneur, and your hourly wage has to pay for all kinds of costs, including time not spent working, getting clients, equipment, training blablabla. Or you're an employee and your take-home pay can be completely detached from the pricing to your clients. When I started my career in a legal/financial firm as a junior my hourly rate was $200 and my hourly pay was about $15, for example. In those days I also worked a lot of overtime and chargeability requirements will drive you mad. Also in many firms you quickly specialise leading to sometimes boring work. On the one hand every legal matter is different and has its own quirks, challenges and interesting unique aspects. On the other hand, when you specialise in a certain field, you also constantly work on similar cases with similar references and jurisprudence, and you indeed often end up filling in templates for standard letters, contracts, motions etc, because the bulk of the substance will be the same over and over. Point being, the $15 an hour also came with mind-numbing work with unhealthy workhours and poor work/life balance. That's just one of many stories, of course and all jobs have their issues. Some lawyers have a great job/life. But there's also plenty of people who may enjoy programming much more.