8. Lawyers Are Highly Paid And Only Care About Winning
Lawyers clearly only care about all of the money theyre earning. They earn the same as doctors, and engineers, and they all live in huge houses with top of the range cars and also go on holiday twice a year. Whats worse, is that theyre doing all of this with your money, seeing as they robbed you blind during that criminal trial/civil case/alternative dispute resolution disagreement they represented you in. They do next to no work, and get paid a ridiculous amount for the privilege. On top of this, they dont actually give a damn about the person they're representing. They are in fact the real life caricature of every television or film lawyer ever portrayed- slimy, back stabbing, and if Jurassic Park is anything to go by, extremely cowardly. To what extent is this actually true, though? Lets move away from the blood sucking lawyer stereotype and have a look at the facts for a minute. A large proportion of pupils (trainee barristers) start out their professional life with University tuition and maintenance loans, up to sixteen grand owed as a result of the Bar Professional Training Course, and will be greeted with a hugely underwhelming twelve grand pupillage award. Its simply outrageous that these lawyers are paid less than half what they owe back in fees for training to be lawyers in their first year, those rich over privileged snobs! Lawyers dont just work during court times. They work weekends, they work early mornings, and they work late evenings. Yet they are only actually paid for the time they spend working on a case (or in terms of solicitors, nine to five, with over time often expected in the bigger London firms). If lawyers were only after the money, this job would be starting to look a little grim by now. Pro Bono work (or free legal work) in the wake of the huge cuts to legal aid has gone through the roof. This means that law students and qualified lawyers alike are taking up their time, for free, to use their training to help those who can no longer afford representation. This voluntary and charitable move is taking a lot of pressure out of a system that would on paper leave thousands of people unable to take legal action in many different kinds of claims. What a selfish bunch we are, eh.