What law profession provides the most pay with a resonable amount of off time?

I hear lawyers make great money but that it is often followed with 90 hour work weeks. I understand that right out of law school one will have to work long hours, but with a few years under your belt and a good working knowledge of your field which area of law gives the best pay with the reasonable hours? Also what areas of alw have the best job outlook?What law profession provides the most pay with a resonable amount of off time?
I have one of the "biglaw" jobs that EvilOrange mentioned, with a $160k/yr. start, so I can speak to that. Lawyers can make great money, especially if you work in biglaw which basically means the top 100 law firms or so, most of which have starting salaries of $160k because they match each other competitively. I think 90 hours a week is an exaggeration. There will certainly be SOME weeks in which you work 90+ hours (when you have a case going to trial next week, or you have a big deal closing that week), but the average is probably more like 60~65 hours per week depending on your firm. (Which means there will also be some 40-45 hour weeks that bring down the average, but the problem is that you can't really control when those weeks occur. Your workload fluctuates in a way that can be hard to predict.) I've only been at this job for a few months, but the above is based on my experience, and from the times that I see more senior lawyers arriving/leaving the office (and how much work they bring home, if any) as well as what more senior lawyers have told me.



Most big law firms give 4 weeks' vacation to associates (20 business days off) per year, but many associates don't use up all their vacation time, because they receive too much deadline-driven work to take that much time off. You also hear stories about people being "asked" to cancel vacations sometime when things come up. So in theory you get 4 weeks, but in practice you can't count on getting that much time off.



But as EvilOrange said, most lawyers make less money than that, often around $40k~$70k to start. Salaries are especially low at non-profit / public interest orgs because they have little money and have to be very frugal. Government lawyers also make pretty low salaries, except in a few specific agencies (such as the SEC) which pay higher. (I think SEC starts around $90k at the entry level.) But at these places, you probably will only be expected to work 40-50 hours a week or so. And if you work for the government, you generally get even shorter hours and more holidays.



And as EvilOrange said, law professors probably have the most time off (all school breaks). And they get paid pretty well. Not as much as biglaw lawyers, but generally more than public interest / gov't lawyers do. In between the two pay levels.
Very few lawyers make great money, at least at first. Most law school graduates won't make over 40-50k/year, and those are the lucky ones who are getting jobs right now. If you go to the very top schools or just have crazy connections, you can make as much as 160k entry level, but again, these jobs are reserved for the graduates of the top schools, and even the students at the top schools don't always have access to them (for example, if their grades are poor). So, I wouldn't advise anyone to go to law school simply to make money because, chances are, you're not going to make the big bucks. There are 200 ABA accredited law schools in America and about 170-180 of them won't get you into biglaw - the kind of job where you work 90 hours a week.



That being said, the legal job with the best pay and the most time off, other than some small-time judge, is a law professor, but these slots are very competitive and you really need to go to a top-6 law school to have a reasonable shot (Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, UChicago, and NYU).What law profession provides the most pay with a resonable amount of off time?
Working for the Federal Government. Not all legal jobs with the feds pay great, but many can pay in the close to 100k range straight out. And 40-60 hour work weeks.
Any politician. They do nothing constructive and make big money for lieing about everything.What law profession provides the most pay with a resonable amount of off time?
Supernumerary Judge.



Nice work, if you can get it.