<p>that has a very good pay...</p>
<p>any suggestions?</p>
<p>If you want to go into a law field with very good pay (Corporate Law), then you shouldn't be worried about public speaking skills, but with people skills (like with any other job).</p>
<p>I think there was a statistic that 95% of lawyers never see the courtroom.</p>
<p>really, 95%?!?!?!?! that seems very high.. what do most spend all their time doing then.</p>
<p>Paperwork and research. I think 95% is true. Most lawyers at large firms never do court work. They do contracts and such.</p>
<p>Here's a pretty good general overview of what lawyers do, from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics:</p>
<p>[url=<a href="http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos053.htm%5DLawyers%5B/url">http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos053.htm]Lawyers[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Practice areas expected to see a lot of growth include intellectual property, energy law, health care law, and elder law, but areas like family law, tax law, commercial law, insurance law, securities law, regulatory compliance law in almost any substantive area, and estate planning/probate work will continue to be mainstays. Bankruptcy is especially hot right now. </p>
<p>Work in any of these areas could involve an occasional courtroom appearance, but most of this work involves counseling and advising clients about how to structure transactions, with one important goal being to keep your client out of court. Lots of people with law degrees also work for government agencies, corporations, or not-for-profit organizations in jobs that are largely non-legal in nature, but for which a legal background may be helpful. And of course, a lot of politicians are lawyers; 26 of the nation's 43 Presidents have been lawyers, including such notables as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and President-elect Barack Obama. And 60 of the 100 Senators (in the current Congress, not sure about the incoming one) are lawyers, 8 of them Harvard Law grads, another 7 grads of UVA law, along with 3 from Yale and 3 from Georgetown. </p>
<p>Relatively few lawyers are primarily litigators, and even they spend most of their time outside the courtroom doing research and preparing cases.</p>
<p>Nah, thats not true. I think it is 95% of the time is spent OUTSIDE the court room :D</p>
<p>the 95% statistic is true. MOst just do research etc.</p>
<p>I'm a real estate lawyer. Great working conditions. Great pay. No courtroom ever.</p>
<p>missypie: what do real estate lawyers do?
that sounds like it would be really good for me.
what did u major in? thanks!</p>
<p>Isn't it also true that there are more people in law school than there are lawyers right now? That kind of sucks</p>
<p>
[quote]
Isn't it also true that there are more people in law school than there are lawyers right now? That kind of sucks
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Not true. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 761,000 people are currently employed as lawyers in the United States, and employment in the field is expected to grow by 11% over the next decade. According to the American Bar Association, there are currently 150,000 students enrolled at ABA-accredited law schools, of which slightly under 142,000 are candidates for the J.D. degree. (The rest are already lawyers and are seeking advanced law degrees). In 2008, 43,000 graduates of accredited law schools earned their J.D. degrees. Of those, some fraction will never pass the bar exam, either because they don't take it or because they fail the exam. Among those who pass the bar exam, some will elect to do something other than practice law, e.g., go into business, government, the non-profit sector, or academia in some capacity other than "attorney." Still others will practice law for a period of time and then move on to some other line of work that may or may not be law-related but isn't classified by the BLS as "lawyer." Still others will practice law overseas and not be counted in the BLS total of U.S. lawyers. Bottom line, then, accredited law schools are cranking out new J.D.s at an annual rate of 5.6% of the total number of "lawyer" jobs. This doesn't seem at all out of whack. That's not to say all law grads will get good jobs, and some will not get jobs at all---especially those graduating from unaccredited schools, many graduating from accredited but lower-ranked schools, or those graduating at the bottom of their class at better schools. But overall, the mid- and long-term job outlook for lawyers is pretty strong.</p>
<p>Ok, thanks. I don't know where I heard that, but it kind of turned me off from being a lawyer, but I think I'd make a decent lawyer.</p>
<p>Intellectual property lawyers don't need public speaking skills.</p>