Posted on 08/22/2007 7:02:09 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
The hourly rates of the country's top lawyers are increasingly coming with something new -- a comma.
A few attorneys crossed into $1,000-per-hour billing before this year, but recent moves to the four-figure mark in New York, which sets trends for legal markets around the country, are seen as a significant turning point.
On Sept. 1, New York's Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP will raise its top rate to more than $1,000 from $950.
A select group of attorneys began billing at that rate before this year, such as Stephen Susman, a founding partner of a Houston firm who has tried big-ticket cases around the country, and Benjamin Civiletti, a former U.S. Attorney General under President Carter and a senior partner at Washington, D.C-based Venable LLP. And in London, top attorneys bill at rates that, when converted, can hit almost $1,500 an hour.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
| Considering a major-league baseball player can make the equivalent of $15,000 per hour, "$1,000 for very seasoned lawyers who can solve complex problems doesn't seem to be inappropriate," says Mike Dillon, the general counsel of Sun Microsystems Inc. |
Why? Lawyers aren’t that scarce. They’re a dime a dozen it seems.
Look at what they practice. Their clients can pay , actually their clients probably look at them like oh say the gardener.
Shysters ain’t cheap!
If they are good at what they do, it would be worth it. Finding the good ones is the big issue.
We have the best justice system in this country that money can buy.
Lawyers are a dime a dozen, until you need one.
We need government sponsored legal care to control the costs of hiring lawyers. We need price controls on lawyers to make sure the working class can afford legal help. We need Hillarycare for lawyers!
Why? Lawyers aren’t that scarce. They’re a dime a dozen it seems.
Either lawyers are overpaid, or there are too many of them. Both can’t be true.
Finding the good ones is the big issue.
I wonder what the paralegals — who actually do the work — are being billed out and what they’re paid.
What we need is to bust the Lawyers Union that bilks money for the dispensation of justice that each American citizen is promised without cost under the pact between the government and the people that is known as the United States Constitution.
Lawyers today are pimps. (meaning no disrespect to street pimps who are just trying to earn a honest living.)
$1000 an hour for evil, corrupt, totalitarian parasites who contribute absolutely nothing to society. Lawyers are a curse on humanity.
With these guys you’re not paying for their legal skills.
I am afraid both are true.
US has the highest number of lawyers per capita, one lawyer in 60 people.
US lawyers are the most expensive in the world.
Anyone obliged to afford these scum undoubtedly needs them. They therefore deserve to pay through the nose for the filth that they hire.
You know what’s even SCARIER?
8 HUMAN hours can be coverted into 20-25 BILLABLE ATTORNEY HOURS!
There’s no way 1 out of 60 people in this country is a lawyer. Where did you read that?
Obviously what we need is a “windfall excess profits tax” on legal fees just like the RATS are calling for on Big Oil.
1 per 356 people.
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