What Income May I Reasonably Expect to Earn if I am Successful in Practice?

It is difficult to estimate, except very generally, what the average yearly earnings of a lawyer will be. It is difficult to do this, because the income will vary according to the locality and the character of the service in which one is engaged. Generally speaking, during the first year of his independent practice a lawyer’s earnings will seldom net him more than a few hundred dollars. With experience and acquaintance, however, his competence will increase. If a lawyer chooses to serve an apprenticeship as it were with another firm, he may reasonably expect from $3 to $10 a week at the beginning, with an increase after three or six months according to the amount of practice in the office in which he is engaged.

The following quotations would tend to discourage one from entering upon the profession, unless he is by nature and training well prepared for the work:

“Its (the profession of law) demands are so high and the conditions of genuine success so exacting, however, that it is inevitable that many of the ill-equipped and misguided beginners who flood the ranks of the legal profession should fail of success.”[40]

[40] The Law as a Vocation, p. 13, Vocation Bureau, Boston, Mass.

“The field is greatly overcrowded and the average earnings very small. This is the great objection. Only the more able and fortunate in securing profitable legal practice can hope to win more than a bare competency. Young men may not only be indebted to their family and friends for a course of study covering three or four years in preparation, but after that for a period of 5, 10, or even 15 years consumed in acquiring a competent practice. Many never reach such a practice, and are obliged to turn to some other occupation for part or full income, or to come down to the end of life in straitened circumstances, unable to do for their families what was earlier done for them to place them in the profession.”[41]

[41] The Law as a Vocation, pp. 66-67, Vocation Bureau, Boston, Mass.

“In 1912 the secretary of the Harvard Law School sent letters to all of the graduates of the school from 1902 to 1911, inclusive, asking for their net earnings each year since graduation. The reports returned are indicated in the following table, although it is to be remembered in this connection that less than half of those written responded and it can reasonably be assumed that these represent the more successful.”[42]

[42] Vocational Studies, pp. 15-16, U. S. Bureau of Education, Collins Publicity Service, Philadelphia, Pa.

Year.Number
of
replies.		Average
earnings.
First694 $664
Second609 1,110
Third497 1,645
Fourth411 2,150
Fifth317 2,668
Sixth249 3,118
Seventh162 3,909
Eighth112 4,426
Ninth 62 5,321
Tenth 40 5,825