Personal Injury Attorney, Info????
Q: I have found myself prepared to return to college for whatever profession I choose. At this point law is a top contender. I have a genuine interest in law but not a specific specialty. Income is a big factor in my decision. Also, just to preemptively quash a handful of idealists... my first career was something I greatly enjoyed. I don't expect my second to be the same. Please reserve your 'follow your dream' comments. I already did. It was great. Now I want to do something different. Here's my question: Mindful of availability of work, on average, which specialty within law is known to be very high paying? Please disregard aberrations, if any, where a very limited number of lawyers monopolize a niche for a great deal of money. Also, I'd like to exclude the possibility of being a bottom feeding ambulance chaser. I've heard of tax lawyers making $1,000/hr. Personal injury is supposed to be very lucrative as well.
A: Really? Well, excu-u-u-u-se ME. The "bottom feeding ambulance chaser" is just about the only kind of atty who really _can_ get filthy rich -- just about everybody else is an hourly wage-earner, even tho the wages may be relatively high they are not unlimited. Not all plaintiff's personal injury attorneys do get rich, of course, (I'm one, and have been for the last 5 years, and I'm doing OK but not rich _yet_) but getting 1/3 of the verdict goes a long way when the verdict is, say, a few billion dollars -- as Joe Jamal of Houston found out when he sued Texaco on behalf of Pennzoil, and as Pete Angelos of Baltimore found out when he brought eleventy squillion asbestos claims against Bethlehem Steel, even before he got into a fight with the Guv'ner over his billion-dollar fee for representing the State in the just-settled tobacco litigation (in which Big Weed promised to pay our fair State the equivalent of several billion simoleons over the next few years). Pete and the Guv finally agreed on an out-of-court settlement for just a few hundred million. In that one case. Pete needs it, cuz he sure isn't paying his ballplayers enough this year to get squat out of them. Yes, Joe and Pete started out their careers with whiplash fender-benders just like I am, and then they got lucky (with a lot of foresight and skill too). But I suppose they're just "ambulance chasers." Feh. My daughter (age 17), bless her heart, has pretty much the same attitude. She's looking for a job, but wants to start out in the executive suite -- none of this mailroom-clerk, retail-sales, or manual-labor stuff for her, boy. She's starting at the top. Not very realistic, as she's finding out as she enters the job market. How the heck do you think someone like, say, Bill Gates got to be paid a bazillion bucks a year? Not because he walked in and said "I'm worth top dollar." He started with an