A bit has happened between then and now, and I've written about it extensively, of course -- just not here.
I had a heart attack a couple of days after my last post (no, it wasn't fatal, why do you ask that?) and we've welcomed four more grandchildren into the family between that last post and this one. I've also retired from the active practice of law, mainly because I wasn't earning any money from it. Persons searching the archives here will quickly discern that I've often bitched about not making any money from my chosen profession -- but I'm dead serious here: At the end, it was costing me money to pretend to be in business. I wasn't making enough money to pay for my malpractice insurance, bar dues, and license fees. Why that was the case is not what brought me back here today. The actual reason should become clear momentarily. Read on.
----------------------------------------------------
This past November, the American Bar Association published, as part of its annual survey of the profession, an article purporting to describe the average wage of the American lawyer.
According to the article, which I first spotted on Twitter, or X if you prefer, as of May 2023, according to statistics apparently obtained from the Bureau of Labor Statistices, the average lawyer in America was earning $176,000, a 19.2% increase from 2021-2023. The linked article includes this chart:
No, none of them was ever me.
In my best year ever, my K-1 -- the total that got reported to the IRS -- the total on which I had to pay taxes -- was somewhere around $50,000 more than I ever actually saw. Ah, the joys of working at a small firm.... (Of course, I'm grateful for that K-1 now -- that was one of the most important numbers that the Social Security Administration used in calculating the monthly benefit on which I now subsist. And since I did in fact pay taxes as if I'd actually received the amount reported -- according to the partnership's accountants, this really was the share of partnership income attributable to me, my vociferous protests notwithstanding -- the SSA in particuar and the good people of the United States in general aren't being cheated in any way.)
I had some good years. But never $176,000 good. There were more than a few years where it was nip and tuck for much of the year whether I would clear more from the practice of law than my Long Suffering Spouse earned as a Catholic school teacher. (Don't get her started on that -- the starting pay for a newly-graduated teacher in the Chicago Public Schools is somewhere around $55,000 -- well more than my wife makes after nearly 30 years at the parish school.) I'd say I usually beat her number... but not always. Toward the end, I had a year where I made nothing after expenses. And, of course, at the very end, in 2023, when the average lawyer was supposedly banking $176,000, I was loaning the business money to pretend to be in business.
I trust it is now clear why I had to vent about this anonymously. Were I to write about it under my own name, it might appear that I was trolling for sympathy or, worse, setting up a GoFundMe.
No. If I ever attempt to profit from my many failures (a notion I have toyed with in the past) it will be by delivering something of value -- a book, I hope -- that you can buy of your own free will, whether online or at your nearest bookstore.
But, in the meantime, I felt compelled to call out this crazy ABA claim about lawyer income: While there are indeed some lawyers who make $176,000 annually, and some, indeed, who make a whole lot more, there are a whole bunch of us who make a whole lot less. And who have done honorable work nonetheless.
I'm not just talking about public interest lawyers either: The linked ABA article notes that that average salary for lawyers in legal aid, public prosecution or defense, other public agencies, or not-for-profits earned far less than $176,000. They bring down the average, if you will. But there were years I would have killed to make so 'little' as these claimed average figures for lawyers at NFPs or doing legal aid.
Well... maybe not killed... but I would have been significantly envious.
So, bottom line: I think these ABA figures, though grounded in government statistics and other seemingly reliable sources, are ludicrous. The average work-a-day lawyer simply doesn't command this kind of dough. I can't prove the ABA wrong, but I am certain that, on the question of average lawyer income, they most certainly are wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment