Average Salary of a Lawyer

If interests and likes are the first criteria for choosing a career, salary is no less parameter in deciding ultimate career path for students. A career as a lawyer is one of the highly recognized careers in the US and offers excellent career opportunities. Lawyers are most decently paid professionals relative to various others and the earning potential in this field has no bounds. If you are at zenith of success, then this field can be a harbinger of professional success and monetary rewards. However, this field has great competition and demands years of consistent hard work and studies.

What is the Starting Salary for a Lawyer?
If you are aware of the path to be a lawyer, then you must also be aware of the fact that this field has extremely tough competition. Training and on the job experience are very important for starting lawyers to learn deeper aspects of this profession. Like every profession, salaries in initial years are less, as lawyers have no work experience and have been just introduced to this field. In the initial years, new lawyers assist the senior lawyers. The starting salary for a lawyer according to latest reports, with an experience of less than a year is between US $50,000 to US $70,000 annually. Amongst the various salary ranges for jobs, this is quite a decent salary to start working with.

Average Pay-scale of a Lawyer
The salary of a lawyer is dependent on the following factors:

• Work Experience
• Private/Public Practices
• Type of Employer/Client
• Specialization of Lawyer (Criminal/Corporate)
• Educational Level
• Working Location/City
• Additional Benefits

Majorly, there are two specializations of lawyers, criminal lawyers and corporate lawyers. Based on the professional expertise, the average salaries of lawyers vary.

Earnings of a Corporate Lawyer
Corporate lawyers generally work for industries and business units. Since there are innumerable laws governing business tactics and industries, the need of corporate lawyers to ensure that all steps of big corporate firms are legal, is immense. The salary with a work experience of near about 1 to 4 years is between US $70,000 to US $125,000 (2009 survey).

An established corporate lawyer who has worked for about 10 to 19 years, can earn between US $100,000 to US $170,000!! These salary ranges are certainly one of the highest in the USA! Corporate lawyers working in private firms earned near about US $160,000 and those working in public sector (hospitals etc.) made a salary of US $140,000.

The Salary of Criminal Lawyers
Criminal lawyers work for individuals who have been charged with accusations and allegations. The salary depends on clients paying capacity and reputation of lawyers! If there is a criminal lawyer who is established and some big client offers him to fight his case, then certainly, the fee charged by the criminal lawyer will be high. Criminal lawyers with work experience of 5 to 10 years can earn as high as US $115,000 p.a. and those with some excellent work experience of 20 years can make as high as US $160,000 annually!

Becoming a lawyer as we can see opens the door for huge earning potential. However, if we look the 7-8 years of education and tireless practicing, such hefty salaries definitely complement their efforts. Added to that are challenges and competition in every case. Aspirants interested in pursuing law courses must mobilize their efforts to work hard and gain in depth knowledge.