2 ms·
> But it's still hard to find a lawyer that charges less than 250/hr. I've seen research that the average lawyer (which is definitely not NYC biglaw firm) succ
by ska 6y ago
> But it's still hard to find a lawyer that charges less than 250/hr.
I've seen research that the average lawyer (which is definitely not NYC biglaw firm) successfully collects on about 1/8 of their nominally billable hours.
If that is true, and you also factor in that they are effectively running a small business with all that implies for non-billable work, your $250/hr lawyer working on their own is making about $50k/year. So even if we are off by nearly a factor of two, they are hardly raking it in.
By comparison if you are in larger firms, more of the hourly rate is captured but it is also paying for multiple people.
Don't get me wrong, there are lawyers out there making great money (e.g. partners in those same NYC biglaw firms). But thinking that is the experience of the average lawyers is a bit like looking at levels.fyi and deciding that all over the country most software engineers are making 250k+.
- JamesBarney 6y agoWhy are they only collecting on 1/8th of their billable time? That's insane.
- ska 6y ago"nominal" billable time, so it's a combination of things but also included client ability to pay, client acquisition costs (depending on speciality, consults may be free for example), etc. I think time estimation is pretty hard in a lot of legal work also, you may be prepped for 60 hours work over then next two weeks and then a client phone call derails it entirely. It's not always easy to replace that time.