Posted on 08/22/2007 7:02:09 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
I believe the supreme court of whatever state the shark is licensed to practice in, has to give the nod to rate hike requests, or the offender risks getting disbarred. This would make law practice much more regulated than the practice of medicine — outside of arm twisting deals with insurance companies and Medicare/Medicaid, doctors literally can charge what the market will bear.
Michael Vick would like to know how much that would cost in dog years?
Some lawyers earn minimum wage. Check want ads in big cities and you’ll see it.
Basing fees on hours performed is anachronistic. Lawyers are in business. They project a reasonable income for themselves and staff. They pay high overhead, usually in plush executive office suites. Equipment rental and maintenance. Phones, supplies, postage. They add it all up and then set an “hourly fee” for various levels of attorneys and paralegals to set rates on.
Doctor don’t use the hourly fee model. You’ve heard the guy say I had my hip replaced for $20,000 and it only took them 2 hours. Obviously there is no time component. It is based on service performed and practitioner’s expertise level.
Where does the utilization rate stand, however. A lawyer who makes a $1000 consultation once or twice a week isn’t doing all that well in the absolute.
I can see one reason for this, which would be to discourage clients offered a "package deal" from endlessly sapping the attorney's time on little things tangentially related to the main issue. That generally doesn't happen with doctors, since they can charge per visit.
My dad called them fee couchs.
The lawyer makes sure you are comfortably seated in one before he tells you his fee.
US has the highest number of lawyers per capita, one lawyer in 60 people.
The US is in the middle of the pack worldwide on professional legal service providers per capita.
Let me know where you get your data.
Your chart distorts the truth.
In the US, all legal service providers are called “lawyers.”
In Japan, there are a minuscule few “lawyers,” but there are multitudes of corporate employees who do the lawyering for their company, exactly the same kind of work done in the US, mostly in law firms.
This has long been true.
NAH, all that wood and leather and hyper-expensive auto’s is to make the client THINK the lawyer is rich so he just HAS to be GREAT.
Little known factoid.
Really? Poor lawyers, do they also collect food stamps and other gov benefits? We are told one can not live on min wage.
Trust me, I know.
HEHE Trueer words have never been spoken. HUMMMMM I smell a lawsuit in there somewhere. Kidding.
The biggest obstacle to real tort reform is that the trial lawyers, a wealthy special interest group, has the Democratic Party in their pocket (and some Republicans).
"You can have affordable health care and a good environment for jobs. Or you can have rich trial lawyers filing frivolous lawsuits. Not both." ~~ Newt Gingrich
"Last year, U.S. corporations spent more money on tort claims than they did on R&D. If innovation is the key to our long term leadership, then some tort lawyers are cashing out our country's future....tort lawyers are ok with state reform, but not national reform. You know what state level tort reform means - it means that as long as there is one lawsuit-friendly state, they can sue almost any major, deep-pocketed company in America. No thanks, America needs national tort reform." ~~ Mitt Romney http://www.freerepublic.com/~unmarkedpackage/#spending
"The current system of litigation is too expensive for America, fails to provide justice for Americans and is being made steadily worse and more expensive by increasingly predatory trial lawyers who have more and more resources devoted to gaming the system to enrich themselves at the expense of individual Americans and American society. This is especially true in the healthcare system. Doctors are more important to our nation's health care system than trial lawyers. In order to ensure the availability of doctors it is important to create and/or maintain hard caps on non-economic damages in medical liability cases." ~~Newt Gingrich http://www.senatorfredsmith.com/content/Pages/show/id/12
King Henry VI, Part II, (Act IV), Scene 2
Would that be considered “hate speech”? LOL.
No, but those worth $1000-1500 an hour can be. Depends what the problem is.
Ok. So that’s a lot different than 1 in 60!
There is a glut of lawyers. Law schools take all they can for the cash. Medical schools keep seats scarce, probably due to AMA wanting it that way. ABA does not seem to interfere with over-acceptance of applicants.
I think you’re mixing “metaphors”...the deep leather couch story is for every inch you sink into the leather, your fee goes up another magnitude. The “fee couch” system involves mythical divorce lawyers collecting their fee in-kind rather than in-cash (but that is only a nasty rumor)
Remember, there is actually a right to have a lawyer in the Constituion. Force the lawyers to take lower pay like we do to the doctors.
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