The Rich According to the Guardian

[Judy1234]

www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/aug/04/workandcareers.executivesalaries

Agree LadyThompson about scruffy lawyers. I will ask my dcs to aim for fatcat, though - which means meeting a specific set of requirements.

i knew a few scruffy lawyers and accountants in my time. No one should envy a junior lawyer/accountant. Many of them would earn the same rate working in sweat shop.

Well blueshoes, it comes back to getting into a bluechip firm of solicitors (as well as a lucrative area of law) or set of chambers, which is down to the usual: exam results, degree, which university, which school...It brings us back to the things we've been debating all along.

My darling nephew has decided he wants to be a barrister (he's only 16, may change his mind) and he is as bright as the North Star, but even assuming he gets to the right university (which, the way he is going, he may well do despite being educated in a comprehensive), I know that there are certain accomplishments, and a certain confidence and polish, which he just won't have and sadly, many sets of chambers will care about this and won't want him.

Oh I married one of those! I recognise the description ... Don't think many lawyers earn as little as classroom teachers though.

Quattro, I know a few solicitors on £35k, and I am not talking about newly qualified ones either; and I think this is comparable with teachers (whom I think start on about £25k, don't they, and it goes up automatically every year, a grand or two, and more with promotions). Again, not saying anything about the rights and wrongs of this, just sharing circumstantial/anecdotal evidence!

blueshoes, I was interested in being a barrister, and my father felt that in order to succeed (esp as a woman) I would have to employ rather sharp practices - I think basically he thought I would turn into a nasty person Not sure whether that was a comment more about me or barristers tbh...

I was talking to a lawyer who was drawing £10,00 a year from his practice. He was paying one member of staff £35,000.

In most jobs there will be some variation between the good people and those who are not so good, the very successful head who turns schools around on £100k a year and the rather mediocre teacher who never gets promotions.

The very successful barristers, solicitors, accountants and bankers are the rarities because most people don't have what it takes to be the best there is even though they entered those professions.

It's not usually those people who make the money in the UK however. It's people who set up businesses and sell them on who make the real capital wealth and most people aren't able to do that. How much did LK Bennett just get for her business she sold? Now she put the shares in a trust so that they could be sold just after CGT went up from 10% to 18% to ebenefit from the old 10% rate. I would say that was prudent and lawful and why on earth not but those against minimising tax burdens presumably think that was morally wrong.

I'm reading this and lol'ing at £25K, with guaranteed pay rises, and £35k being talked about as if they were low incomes! It's a different world out there.

thanks nooka! I left the conversation for a while to cool down.blueshoes I take your point. However,perhaps your legal acquaintances may not want to admit any dissatisfaction? Perhaps your point of reference may be as biased as mine? Just a thought.

"In most jobs there will be some variation between the good people and those who are not so good, the very successful head who turns schools around on £100k a year and the rather mediocre teacher who never gets promotions"

It's not always to do with talent. In teaching the staff who get paid the most are those who take on management roles. I know many people in management roles in schools and colleges who are actually very mediocre teachers. Conversely, there are some outstanding, highly creative and dynamic teachers out there who will never earn a good salary because they don't want to go down that career path - into management. They still transform lives. Actually, in my experience I've come across more managers in FE who are truly awful teachers - they go into management because they are better at balancing budgets than inspiring young people. And the really talented people who the students loved were the mavericks - the ones struggling along on crap salaries who had no interest in sitting around thinking up mission statements and going to pointless meetings.

I think Xenia, you also have to acknowledge that we are not a completely meritocratic society - if we were, why are the earning tables consistently topped by disproportionate numbers of white, public school educated men? Unless you want to argue that this very specific, small social group is disproportionately blessed with innate intelligence, determination and talent and that women and people from ethnic minorities, as a group, are simply less hard working, talented or intelligent?

Silly women give up work that's why men earn more. The women really ought to realise they have a duty to their daughters and other women to be the ones at work and their white WASP husbands changing nappies but instead they enable to prejudice to continue and wimp out of careers or pick service roles and thus women never get to be 100% of the highest paid hedge fund managers and the BP board is not 100% female. Every woman who sees finding child care or getting back to let the nanny go or to get to the child minder is doing women down. Always ensure men are as likely to fix childcare and deal with it as women and we will start to ensure there is a tiny bit more equality than there is now.

Women also do seem to choose low paid jobs. I don't know why but they do.

Twinklemegan, just to clarify, I wasn't necessarily saying that they were low incomes. I think the government calculated national average income is £24k or thereabouts. Just pointing out not all lawyers are 'rich', in the manner of the people Polly Toynbee talks about.

Anyway, Tittybangbang made some good points: whatever Xenia likes to think, we don't live in a meritocracy. It's smug, lazy and obdurate - or perhaps just incredibly naive - to imagine that we live in a meritocracy. If only!

suey2, my 'acquiantances' also include my dh and close friends. I am not saying all or most lawyers are bird happy, just not any happier or sadder within the normal range than a random sample of physiotherapists or headteachers or any other profession which people freely choose to enter into or leave.

In the normal course of things, lawyers do quit to join a law firm with more reasonable working practices, move in-house, sideways into legal-related management-type roles or even completely re-tool. I don't see that as a sign they are generally an unhappy lot. Since you had a different experience (from your job), I just wanted to get to the bottom of it - and I have.

A barrister does the business in court. Basically, if there is a court case, the solicitor handling the case will have to brief a barrister who will be the client's advocate in court. They have to absorb all the fine details of the case, build an argument and effectively perform it, as well as being fully cognisant of all aspects of the law.

Yeah, it's becoming a barrister. What happens is, you do your degree, not necessarily law; then they might do a law conversion course. In any case, they then have to do something called the BVC, Bar Vocational Course, then they are 'called to the Bar' by an 'Inn'. A barrister must be a member of one of the Inns of Court, which traditionally educated and regulated barristers. There are four Inns of Court: The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, and The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. All are situated in central London, near the Royal Courts of Justice. They perform scholastic and social roles, and in all cases, provide financial aid to student barristers (subject to merit) through scholarships. It is the Inns that actually "call" the student to the Bar at a ceremony similar to a graduation. The first six months of this period is spent shadowing more senior practitioners, after which pupil barristers may begin to undertake some court work of their own. Following successful completion of this stage, most barristers then join a set of Chambers, a group of 'counsel' (this is another word for a barrister) who share the costs of premises and support staff whilst remaining individually self-employed.

Sorry for length explanation. This probably makes it sound quite straightforward but it is actually really hard to get into. Many people get so far and then they can't find a chambers to give them a pupillage, or even if they do, getting accepted into a set of chambers afterwards can be nigh on impossible. I don't think I am being controversial when I say that the Bar is mainly (though not entirely) peopled by white former public schoolboys.

And some solicitors and barristers earn £1m - £2m a year and some earn under £20k. So it's a bit hard to generalise and say they are all very very well off.

(LadyT, although do remember there is a much much higher representation in law in general in the UK than in other occupations which if anything suggests there is too much positive discrimination or so I read, although I am not syaing that is so when you get to the £1m+ earners; it's a career of choice for many immigrants - whenever I do law fairs at my children's schools I have masses of reluctant Asian girls dragged over by their parents who will only consider law/medicine/accountancy as careers)

I don't think (m)any barristers earn under £20k though as I said above, there will be quite a few solicitors earning close to the national average wage.

It's true, though, as I said above, that not all 'lawyers' are rolling in it, which was my general point.

As for ethnic minorities in working in the law, I think for some cultures the professions are prized, but I am afraid all the chambers I'm familiar with are, in the main, full of white ex-public schoolboys. Lots of possible reasons for this: the well-trodden good school, good university route; the fact that you need a heck of a lot of money to support yourself throughout your training; tradition (the Bar is rather a stuffy, archaic institution, traditionally the refuge of 'gentlemen')...It can be hard(er) for women as well - in that it's a macho, hectoring environment, like the House of Commons or the City.

no worries blueshoes. When I think about it the sports injury patients rarely complain about work if I am honest. I was more trying to provide an alternate position to the implication that these people sit in their marbled offices rubbing their hands together and trying to think of ways to rip off the state. I am sure you will agree that that picture is untrue. (BTW my DH is a lawyer too, but a barrister so totally different again)

Riven - no not all barristers are in London. The guys with the wigs are barristers (unless you mean the judge).

I know quite a few barristers and I don't know any who earn under £100k never mind £20k. Just judging by the swimming pools, obv not privy to their tax returns.

As for solicitors earning close to the national average wage, if many exist they will be in legal aid practices or public service, and in solicitors' earning terms, they will be at the bottom of the heap. So a profession where the bottom of the heap is sitting at the average wage is a well paid job IMO.