Who gets paid more criminal or family lawyers?
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Answer:
actually it is about the same. There are people who spend thousands and thousands on a divorce or child custody. Adoptions are also not cheap. Then you have criminal lawyers who charge thousands to represent someone. It is really about the same. I worked for a lawyer who did both and he had about equal income from both.
White collar private practice criminal lawyers. Then, family law. Then, public appointed council.
Family lawyers. Criminal lawyers only get paid when they have rich clients, but for the most part, Criminal lawyers are appointed to clients that can not afford to pay. The lawyers are eventually paid by the state to represent these criminals, but they are not paid very well.
Family most likely
In general, family lawyers.
All criminal lawyers who are prosecuting criminals are called prosecutors. They are all employed by the state and earn state salaries. Those who represent people charged with crimes are defense attorneys and they can either be state employees - in which case they are public defenders and earn a state salary - or they are private defense attorneys. While some private defense attorneys can probably command high hourly rates (as do some prominent family lawyers) most of them do not have enough private clients to keep them busy and accept referrals from the public defenders offices to represent clients that office can not (for instance if two people are charged in connection with a robbery, the public defender's office can only represent one of them and must refer the other one to a private attorney who will rep him due to conflicts of interest). In those cases, the private attorney gets paid anywhere from $50 - $120 an hour for their time. That is a lot less than any family lawyer gets paid.
of course criminal lawyers.. unless the lawyer sucks and loses every case.
The greatest potential is criminal defense, but the reality doesn't bear that out. It all depends on who a lawyer defends and for what. Family law (divorce, custody, etc) provides a more reliable, stable income. To hit the jackpot, a criminal defense atty needs to represent high profile (rich) clients, like OJ or Scooter. Otherwise, they're down in the trenches, billing by the hour, defending rich kids or their parents from drunk driving charges, domestic violence, etc.
In private practice, they're about equal. It's just a matter of how mundane they want the work to be.
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