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Written by : Quincy Lueckenbach |
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hey guys welcome back if you're new to the channel I'm Angela for Paul of the law tribe network I make videos on law school at the legal world and being a lawyer in general every single Tuesday so be sure to hit subscribe and tap that notification bell so you can be notified every single Tuesday when new videos come out today's video is in response to a question I get asked a lot which is how much money do lawyers make now I made a video on the entry-level salary and bonus of a big law law firm associate but what about all the other jobs out there what about all the other different levels of experience for lawyers what can you expect to make during your career as a lawyer if you are excited and interested to find out go ahead and hit that like button and let's get on it now it's important to know that the amount of money that you'll make as a lawyer will depend on several important factors most importantly the type of law that you're practicing the sector that you're practicing it in the size of the institution where you're practicing and your dia graphical location the type of law do you practice can absolutely influence the amount of money you make because certain types of law are catered to larger clients so well the individuals corporations so these are things like mergers and acquisitions IP litigation securities law whereas other types of law catered more to individuals so family law criminal law immigration law and when you're talking about these different types of clients the larger clients are able and willing to pay these high rates because you are in turn making them a lot of money words when you're talking about working in a field where your client bases individuals they obviously don't have the same economic resources and you might not actually be making them money at all you might be offering them a service that improves their livelihood the sector where you're working is also going to be a big player and how much money you make and when I say sector I mean what part of the legal market are you working in is it a law firm is it in-house at a corporation is it a non-profit is it a government agency is it in academia and generally speaking if you're working in the private sector you're going to be making more than working in the public sector so working in a law firm or corporation is generally going to have a higher salary than working in a government agency working in a university as a professor or working as a the size of the institution also of course matters so within each of the five sectors that I mentioned the size of the place where you're working is going to have an impact on how much money you make so if we're talking about law firms for example if you're talking about a 1,500 lawyer law firm yes they're going to pay you the high market rate salary and bonus whereas a solo practitioner is going to be making as much money as he or she can bring through the door if you're talking about a corporation going in-house yes there are multinational corporations that will pay you a really great salary if you're talking about a smaller company that's maybe two or three people they're going to be able to pay you what they can afford based on their client base nonprofit same thing some nonprofits are very well-funded and you can make a really good salary there others are smaller more local and they don't have those resources also if you're talking about government agencies if you're talking about a big federal government agency like the DOJ or the SEC that's gonna be a higher salary than maybe your local district attorney's office for example and finally in academia there is such a run of a gamut in terms of those incomes in those salaries because you could work anywhere from a nationally renowned prestigious university or law school all the way down to your local university where you live and so those are all going to be factors in determining how much you are going to make as a lawyer and finally geographic location and as we're gonna see in a minute larger markets like New York San Francisco Chicago DC are going to pay their lawyers more on average than regional markets like Tallahassee or Phoenix or Birmingham Alabama now let's get to the actual numbers so the most recent data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics is that the median annual income for lawyers is 121 thousand dollars per year now keep in mind that this number includes lawyers from all sectors all cities all different levels of experience to give you guys a deeper dive into how that median annual income plays out the lowest 10% of practicing attorneys are earning fifty eight thousand two hundred and twenty dollars the 25th percentile of practicing attorneys is making seventy nine thousand one hundred and sixty dollars per year and the top 75th percentile is making one hundred and eighty two thousand four hundred and ninety dollars per year and if you're talking about where the highest concentration of lawyers are working so where the most legal jobs are the top five list is California New York Florida Texas and DC so now you know what the annual median income of lawyers is you know where the highest concentration of those lawyers work but what about the cities that pay their lawyers the highest the top paying States for legal jobs are DC with an average salary of one hundred and ninety three thousand per year California with an average salary of one hundred and seventy two thousand per year New York with an average salary of one hundred and sixty seven thousand per year Massachusetts with an average salary of one hundred and sixty-six thousand per year and Connecticut with an average salary of one hundred and fifty four thousand per year we could keep breaking down these statistics all day long but instead of doing that I'm gonna leave you guys a link in the description below so you can check them out for yourself do as deep a dive as you possibly want and instead I'm going to leave you with this one last piece of information which is all of these stats and all of the numbers that we've been looking at so far our median salaries and average City incomes for lawyers who are currently practicing meaning they include lawyers who've been practicing for 30 40 50 years but what can you expect as a recent law school graduate to be making right off the bat well in 2018 now it reported that the median income for entry-level legal positions was $90,000 but keep in mind that this amount is actually very bimodal in nature meaning that there are jobs concentrated at the very high end of the spectrum and jobs concentrated at the very low end of the spectrum and so when you're looking at the breakdown twenty percent of those jobs fall into the highest tier category of $180,000 or more whereas the biggest chunk 50% of those recent graduates fall into the lowest tier which is forty-five thousand to seventy-five thousand dollars per year so just keep that in mind when you're making your financial plans make sure you have realistic expectations about what your income is going to look like when you first leave law school if you guys are interested in learning more about leg
Thanks for your comment Eugene Govert, have a nice day.
- Quincy Lueckenbach, Staff Member
everybody trademark attorney Josh gurbin I want to answer a common question we get which is what do trademark attorneys do in today's world you have a lot of internet-based companies that claim they can file your trademark for $69 so why should you hire a trademark attorney what can an attorney do for you so you're the five things that I think trademark attorneys do that add the most value to any trademark application process the first is identified that trademarks your company has the second is properly searched those trademarks prior to you adopting them or trying to register them with the federal government the third is to develop a proper filing strategy the fourth is to correctly draft your application to avoid technical errors that could result in the refusal of your trademark application and the final is to respond to any office actions or refusals that you may receive along the way so the first point on our list is that a trademark attorney can help identify the trademarks your company has and you may say well Josh that seems pretty simple but it might not be so obviously you've got your company name that's typically one you've got slogans perhaps you've got logos but what about your individual product names or product feature names what about service names that you may have what about this names for seminars your company may offer theirs you could even protect the packaging for a product the way it looks you could protect the look and feel of a store that you have there's all sorts of different things you can protect as trademarks and a good trademark attorney can help you identify what things you can register and add to your IP portfolio which ultimately adds value to your business over time the second thing a good trademark attorney can do is conduct trademark searches on your trademarks before you get too far into marketing them and before you even file a trademark application this way here you don't waste money on trademark applications that are almost certainly to be refused or you can identify a potential conflict before it gets to be a huge problem the third thing a good attorney can do is help you with a filing strategy for your trademarks so an example of this is that we will get a client that calls us and says hey I'd like to register my name logo and slogan and he it is all in one neat package here's a good example let's look at Nike logo right you have a Nike the swoosh and just do it underneath it so a lot of clients will think this is one trademark vine but it's actually three so you have the name Nike you have the swoosh itself and then you have just do it and the reason you would want to file all three of these elements separately is that a the protection in each individual element is much stronger if it's registered alone just from a legal standpoint and be if any of these elements changes over time it will affect the overall rights of the trademark so for example your name may always be Nike but let's say that swoosh gets outdated right and you need to change it well you can change that swoosh and you'll never lose the rights in the word Nike you would just file a new application for whatever the new swoosh looks like or the the new logo looks like down the road so developing that particular filing strategy is something that trademark attorneys do for clients that many clients on their own would not be able to understand because it's just not something they do on a daily basis the fourth item on our list is that trademark attorneys help draft proper trademark applications that meet the technical specifications of the United States Patent and Trademark Office it's important to remember that a trademark application is a legal document and while the questions may sometimes seem innocuous or easy there's typically a technical response that's required in order for the government to be able to approve your application so if a trademark attorney drafts your application you're more likely to see an approval by the government than if you just draft it yourself you don't have to take my word for this the University of North Carolina did a study that showed there was nearly a 50% increase in the acceptance rate of applications from people that filed a trademark with an attorney versus doing it without and the final thing that trademark attorneys do is we help respond to office actions or refusals to a trademark application so not all trademark applications go smoothly and you may receive a refusal for one reason or another it's not the end of the road by far for most trademarks for example if you receive a refusal because of a potentially conflicting other trademark there's a number of things a trademark attorney can evaluate and help you do for example could you just draft an appeal could we make an argument to the that would get around the refusal or maybe it's a little bit more complicated maybe the owner of that blocking registration is no longer using that trademark an attorney can help you evaluate whether or not that trademark could actually be cancelled allowing your trademark to then proceed so as you can see there are many things that trademark attorneys do that can be helpful to developing and securing your trademark and intellectual property portfolio I hope you found this helpful and I'll talk to you next time
Thanks Pei your participation is very much appreciated
- Quincy Lueckenbach
About the author
I've studied pure sociology at Duke University in Durham and I am an expert in thermal physics. I usually feel refreshed. My previous job was dry wall installer I held this position for 19 years, I love talking about listening to music and remote control cars. Huge fan of LeBron James I practice american football and collect trading cards.
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