
$700/hr for legal advice vs. $100/hr for a top software engineer – why? - dannylandau
I'm currently working with a really great iOS developer.  He is charging me $100/hr, which seems like a lot, but the hours he quoted for the full project were very reasonable.  However, need some contractual work for the same company and have a friend who is a partner at a major law firm in the Valley &#38; he charges close to $700/hr.   He is very bright and hard working, but can anything justify $700/hr.  What am I missing?
======
rayiner
Prices are of course about supply and demand. The supply of business lawyers
is limited, which keeps prices (relatively) high. What keeps supply limited?
In practice, bar admission requirements are not the operative bottleneck.
There are about twice as many JD's each year as there are jobs for them, and
the prices for entry-level legal work (across the whole industry) have fallen
far below that of entry-level engineering work. A programmer from a top 100
school with decent but not amazing grades can come out expecting to get a job
and making $45k+. A lawyer with similar credentials might go a year without
finding a job and end up making $35-40k at a small firm.

So what keeps prices high at the top end? The answer is branding. Business
clients don't trust their sensitive legal work to firms that don't have
brands. And these firms that have brands don't hire just anyone. Only about
10-15% of fresh JD's end up at a medium to large firm working on corporate
law, and the majority of them come out of the top 20 (of 200+) law schools.
There are only so many graduates of Stanford and Berkeley to go around, so
only so many of them get hired and trained at business law firms, and only so
many of those make it to partner and build up years of experience. This is the
real supply bottleneck.

You've always seen this phenomenon in banking and consulting (business clients
trust their M&A to Goldman, who hires from Harvard and Princeton, maybe Yale
if they're really feeling pinched). Now, you're seeing it in engineering too.
It used to be that large companies didn't care much about where you went to
school or what your grades were. But these days, places like Google, Facebook,
etc, disproportionately recruits from the Stanford/MIT set. As a result,
salaries at these companies have bid up dramatically. I hear a fourth year
engineer at Google can make $250k+. That's comparable to a fourth year lawyer
at a top law firm. These salaries were unheard of in engineering back when
places like IBM didn't care all that much about Stanford versus CSU.

~~~
arikrak
Not everyone gets the most expensive product or service. Shouldn't people be
able to get cheaper lawyers? Why don't some of the unemployed lawyers create
budget practices? No person or business would be willing to use them?

~~~
rayiner
There are cheaper lawyers, even cheaper business lawyers. See:
[http://lawfirmsuccess.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/big-news-
for-...](http://lawfirmsuccess.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/big-news-for-biglaw-
partner-billing-bad-news-for-boutique-firm-prices). The inter-quartile ranges
in the study are $200 - $875.

E.g. see: [http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/print-
edition/2012/04/27/l...](http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/print-
edition/2012/04/27/lawyer-inflation-with-economy.html?page=all). The firm in
the article is a 135 lawyer outfit (so solidly on the larger end of mid-sized)
with offices in Boston and D.C. and four other Northeastern cities. Partners
bill out between $300-$500. (No affiliation, just Google-ed).

Experienced solo practitioners serving individuals in personal matters might
charge $100-$150. And if you just need someone with a JD, you can get one for
$10/hour on Craigslist.

Then on the other end of the spectrum, you have firms like Wachtell Lipton,
who basically only do billion dollar M&A deals. They don't even charge a fee,
they charge a percentage of the deal value. People hire them because when
you've got a $5 billion deal, you don't care if your legal fees end up in the
tens of millions of dollars.

------
keithwarren
I truly hope he is not a _great_ iOS developer because that rate is criminally
low.

There is something magical that happens in the 100 pennies between 99 per hour
and 100 per hour, a mental chasm that is in reality no different than 98/hr vs
99/hr but we make it into a big deal. Why he chose that number, and why people
choose any number for an hourly rate is always a curious thing to me. We pick
numbers that we think are palatable with no real regard for the same rigor we
put into other processes. Has he _tested_ his rate?

But the idea of hourly rates is accepting of the premise incorrectly...

My guess is that if he is truly great he could make some lawyers jealous.
Charging $700/hr may seem far fetched for a developer but _making_ 700/hr is a
very different thing. 70K bill to a client for something that took 100 hours
to make is a much more salient strategy if you give them what they want.

~~~
RivieraKid
I'm a top Android developer from the Czech Republic and usually charge about
$25/hour.

~~~
clashofthetitan
Hi RivieraKid, would love to get in touch about some work - do you think you
could drop me an email or let me know your address so I can contact you? can
reach me at: HanLAyNijhfB@meltmail.com

~~~
RivieraKid
Email dropped.

------
tzs
One of chef Gordon Ramsay's signature dishes is lobster ravioli with celery
root cream and shellfish vinaigrette. If you were to hire Ramsay to come and
make that dish for a dinner party at your house, I'd guess his hourly rate
would be pretty high.

Now suppose you hired Ramsay, but instead of a dinner party it was for your
kid's birthday party--and all you want Ramsay to do is boil Oscar Meyer hot
dogs and serve then on Safeway hot dog buns with Heinz Ketchup (and only that)
on them, and later scoop some store-bought ice cream onto store-bought cake.

This is something you could hire a neighborhood teen to do for $20. Do you
think Ramsay is going to do it for $20, because you are asking him to do
something much simpler than make his signature food?

Of course not. He's charging for his talent and skill. If you want to misuse
that by having him work on something that is trivial and can be done easily by
someone with much less talent or skill, that's your problem.

I suspect that's what you are doing with the lawyer. A partner in a major firm
has the skill and talent to work on very large and complicated matters that
involve big companies and a lot of money--things like major mergers and
acquisitions, IPOs, and such.

You are asking him for something that could probably be drafted by a paralegal
from his office, and then checked over by a junior associate--the legal
equivalent of boiling hot dogs.

~~~
Quizzy
Bad analogy. Partners in big firm get big bucks as the "rainmaker", legal
skills are not why partners are paid well. If an attorney has only legal
skills but no ability to land business, he will always be a junior partner at
best or fired and replaced by a more promising graduate. Good attorneys are a
dime a dozen, but rainmakers are worth three times as much.

~~~
1123581321
That is not true. First, there is a common type of rainmaker who has developed
a reputation as a very good lawyer. Second, the other reasons lawyers become
partners are a) to reward them for their skill and loyalty to the firm, b)
because of their connections which they use to negotiate, c) because of their
skill in managing associates or simply the entire firm.

------
rm999
Is it fair to compare a major law firm with an independent software engineer?
At my last company (~3000 employees) when I did billable work they charged the
client 300/hour. From a few minutes of googling I am reading that typical
lawyer fees (not big law firms) are 200-300 dollar an hour, eg:
<http://www.topix.com/forum/city/utica-ny/TDV8TU0N3HTLL1UMK>.

I've never hired a lawyer and I've never directly contracted myself out so I
am by no means an expert on this topic. Great question though.

~~~
jbester
Agreed with parent. The burdened rate (that is pay, plus benefits, plus
company overhead) for a decent sized software company will easily be $200 -
$800 /hr depending on location and company size.

Lawyers are licensed and specialized - the costs associated are passed through
to the customers into their rate.

~~~
codeonfire
With overhead meaning seven layers of management, their bonuses, company
vehicles, and stock grants.

------
wallacrw
All major Silicon Valley law firms (Gunderson, Wilson Sonsini, Fenwick,
Cooley) will defer your fees to get you as a client. You should negotiate at
least $15k-$20k of deferral of fees if you are a startup, which means you
won't cut them a check until/unless you get financed. They should also offer
you a discount on their normal rates of 10-20%. And they may ask for warrants;
up to you to issue these. They may pound sand, but if they really want those,
then you should be getting a lot of legal work for free.

The vast majority of legal work they do for you as a startup is form work, so
don't ever pay a partner more than a half hour to review it. 90% of the work
is literally changing names in a document: incorporation docs, board notes,
issuance of options, option plan, assignments of IP, and financing docs should
all be standardized. I know this because I worked at Gunderson as an attorney.

What you want from startup lawyers is a clean form that your investors have
seen before. Don't do anything that makes an investor think twice. Any form
from the firms I mentioned above will do.

Net net: you shouldn't worry about $700/hour. It's too much, you shouldn't be
hiring that particular attorney, and even if you do owe thousands of dollars,
you shouldn't have to pay it until you're financed (which means you have the
cash anyway).

------
jaredstenquist
This is why I built LawyerClock. I got pissed off at the long calls with
corporate attorneys for $600+ per hour (per partner!).

<http://www.lawyerclock.com>

* I coded this during lawyer meetings.

------
petercooper
_He is very bright and hard working, but can anything justify $700/hr._

Are you going to employ him at the $700/hr rate? If so, you would have
justified it. Unless the $700/hr were just a ploy to start a pricing
negotiation, rather than what he typically bills, the cost is being justified
by the people keeping him in business.

That aside, if he works for a big firm, it'd be fairer to compare his rate to
that of what a consulting firm bills out its developers (which is very far
north of $100/hr).

------
jonknee
Because you're getting a steal from the iOS developer and you're also going
direct vs through a firm for the attorney. To keep the situations similar you
would need to hire a consulting company and see what they charge you per hour
(or find an indie attorney).

------
dfc
A failure of a free market for legal services. Anyone can become a
professional ios developer, there is free entry/exit in this market. The ABA
artificially limits the number of potential lawyers with the Bar and requiring
you go to an accredited school.[1] An intelligent individual cannot educate
themselves in the legal field in their spare time and get to the point where
they can hang their own shingle in the same manner an ios developer can. The
number of potential lawyers is further reduced by the patent bar as well and
states that do not honor out of state lawyers.

[1] With the exception of a few states where one can still "read law" under a
judge or attorney and take the bar.

~~~
jonknee
That's not it, there are too many attorneys as it is (new grads aren't finding
jobs).

One big difference is people brag about a high paid attorney (it's considered
a good thing to pay a lot for legal advice) but never brag about how much they
pay their developers (it's considered a good thing to pay less for
developers).

~~~
dfc
I have never seen anyone claim that the ABA bar and accreditation process did
not have an effect on wages. That is a tough position to stake out. Do you
have any evidence that the ABA's barrier to entry into the legal market does
not inflate wages? And/or that patent bar admission does not increase the
amount of money a lawyer can charge for their time?

Moreover the "new grads without jobs" is a fairly recent development.* Recent
grads with jobs are certainly not billing $700 an hour, so I'm not really sure
what that has to do with the original question.

* Given the recent decline in LSAT registrations it is clear that this supply surplus is temporary and is not the new normal.

------
patio11
The only thing you need to so to charge $700 an hour is convince a business
your services are worth that much, typically by saying that in X time you can
deliver Y result which will increase revenue or decrease costs by some number
Z, where Z is greater than your rate times X.

There exist at least some software developers who bill $700 an hour or north
of that, by the way.

------
skadamat
Well first off, he can value his time however much he wants. As a partner at a
major law firm in SV, he's incredibly busy so his time is extremely valuable
(any distraction like consulting only makes sense at a rate of ~700 per hour
for him) and as a partner, he's probably making millions at the firm. If he
spent 5 more hours at the firm and was able to generate a multiple of what
you're paying him for 5 hours of work (3500), then he's probably not charging
enough, right?

If you want general legal advice for startups, talk to startup-friendly law
firms. Many have packages where you give up 1-2 thousand bucks only for X
number of hours + turning your startup into an INC or LLC or whatever + a
small equity stake. For other law firms, you'll just have to talk to them and
figure out what their rates are. Most are more in the 50-100 dollar range.
Don't skimp on legal expenses, if you get sued for a few million dollars,
you'll regret skimping on paying a better lawyer a few thousand bucks more.

------
itsprofitbaron
During late 1990s aka. "the dot com boom" there was a severe shortage of
corporate lawyers in Silicon Valley due to the deal work exploding with record
IPOs, M&A and VC activity etc.

Alongside the shortage, the cost of living in the Bay Area was rising which
increased when there was an exodus of lawyers from law firms going to the Bay
Area for in-house opportunities at startups. As a result to combat this, Law
firms in SF/LA increased their associates pay which was then being matched
throughout the rest of the country.

Once this happened it resulted in the increased wages leading to the prices at
the level they are because:

\- Noone wants to cut their wages - companies also do anything they can to
prevent wage cuts even if that means reducing headcount.

\- Law firms prestige are linked to money - in order to attract the best
talent they compete on price by paying the highest starting salaries and
bonuses. Likewise in order to keep the rest of the employees motivated they
pay the same salaries across departments. Thus they then had to tackle the
issue of the increase overheads so law firms increased their rates to manage
increased overheads and to increase profitability of the firm ensuring they
keep their best talent around.

However, with that said the reason lawyers are expensive despite the
"oversupply" of them is because if you require a law firm with experience that
is able to handle complex litigation, transactions etc and is able to allocate
a significant amount of man-hours at your case then you're going to have to
compensate them in order to do so.

So to answer the question are lawyers expensive, they're not. You can find one
to handle basic paper work inexpensively however, if you require an
experienced lawyer who can handle complex litigation, complex litigation,
transactions etc and is able to allocate a significant amount of man-hours at
your case then you're going to have to compensate them in order to do so.

------
bengotow
1\. A _top_ iOS developer usually costs more - between $150/hr and $200/hr in
my experience. In the valley, it might be even more. Maybe your guy should be
charging more, maybe he doesn't feel like it! A lot of guys I've worked with
don't realize how much they're worth. Either way, hold on to him and give him
a bonus when he finishes the project on time.

2\. I think you're paying $700/hr because you 1) went straight for a partner
and 2) you went straight for a major law firm in the valley. It's also a
mindset difference. I think lawyers charge based on the value they add, not
the hours they work, whereas developers typically think about hours. A
developer who writes a piece of code that saves you $1M should charge $100k
for it, and a lawyer probably would. On the other hand, your developer would
probably charge you 1.5 hrs * $100 / hr. :) * Full disclosure: I'm a developer
and I have lawyer friends, but

------
gnosis
* Outsourcing hasn't hit the legal profession like it has software development.

* You can't just read a legal book over the weekend and call yourself an attorney.

* Open source and Free software. While lawyers do do some pro-bono work, there's not nearly as much of it being done as there is volunteer work being done by software developers around the world.

------
gnosis
I've known network consultants who charged banks and other Wall St firms
$2600/hr for troubleshooting. A network outage could easily cost some of these
firms millions of dollars per hour, so paying $2600/hr to fix such an outage
is petty cash in comparison.

~~~
Firehed
Definitely the right way to think about it - lawyers (or network technicians)
as cost-saving tools, rather than direct expenses.

Hire the $2600/hr guy and be done in ten minutes because of his fifteen years
experience and deep knowledge of the system; spend $433 very quickly. Pick the
$50/hr rent-an-intern and you're down for a day while they're googling the
fixes. Spend about the same amount, but avoid the losses from 7+ extra hours
of downtime.

Time is money, after all.

Same thing with an after-hours/emergency call to a plumber. Yes, you'll spend
twice as much - but that's nothing compared to what it will cost to repair the
structural damage to your house because your toilet overflowed and you ended
up with three inches of standing water soaking into your everything.

------
grumps
I think it's already been pointed out but I'll clarify a little more.

You've hired an independent developer, at a reasonable rate.

Hiring a lawyer from a law firm, comes at the rate of the firm. He bring to
the table the resources of a large law firm, and along with the cost of
operating a law firm. In addition to his nice salary.

If you had hired an tech consulting firm you'd be looking a similar hourly
rate if you brought in a partner.

~~~
flatfilefan

       this

------
femto
Is it feasible to program a machine learning system (such as Watson?) to run a
straightforward legal case, with a natural language interface?

Presumably the majority of "bread and butter" legal cases don't require an
innovative step? Rather, they involve rolling out a set of standard arguments
and countering a set of standard arguments put forward by the opposition, a
bit like a chess game? I'm talking straighforward stuff, rather than the types
of cases that set legal precedent.

If so, wouldn't it be a case of cramming a machine full of the necessary legal
information, then doing a search to navigate a path to a winning position? If
a winning position with the required certainty could not be found by the
machine, the legal advice might be "call a human lawyer".

~~~
Anechoic
_Is it feasible to program a machine learning system (such as Watson?) to run
a straightforward legal case, with a natural language interface?_

The law is full of context and interpretation details. One example my business
constantly runs into is weather or not we have to register as a 'foreign
business" when we do business in other states (my business is an engineering
consulting business that does work in many states, sometimes requiring travel,
sometimes not).

All of the states we looked into have the same basic wording tin the foreign
business statue, but they _interpret_ it different - for some states, you only
have to register is you maintain an office presence; for some states you have
to register only if you spend a significant amount of time in the state, other
states you have to register if the money originates in the state, even if you
never set foot there.

I'd love to see someone with ML or AI experience address the challenges
involved in this. I would imagine it would be possible, but require a shitload
of work, and even then may require some review.

~~~
femto
From my reading, context and interpretation were two domains that IBM
specifically had to target with Watson [1], to get it to process natural
language. If Jeopardy is solved, legal advocacy might be a next harder
problem?

Like Jeopardy, the task involves a lot of "soft" information, but results in
an easy to measure pass/fail decision. It could be run in real-time, as an
advocate in a courtroom, or off-line as a legal adviser. Also like Jeopardy,
it offers the opportunity of a public contest, and the associated PR.

[1] <http://www.research.ibm.com/deepqa/faq.shtml>

\---

Edit:

It seems like at least one person inside IBM is already thinking this way. To
quote [2]:

"Law, Patent and Trademarks"

"Not only could a Watson-like capability minimize filing through existing
databases on laws, prior cases, rulings, hearings, opinions, it could also be
used as a method of testing witness questions. or suggest a series of
inquiries and questions for litigation. It could be used to simulate certain
judges, prosecution and defense lawyers, based on prior cases."

"A Watson-like system could generate questions for a prospective patent claim
based on it's ingestion of the entire patent and trademark database."

[2]
[https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/davidian/entry/whe...](https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/davidian/entry/where_does_ibm_watson_go_after_jeopardy7?lang=en_us)

------
Suncho
Because if they were paid anywhere close to the same amount, who would
_choose_ to be a lawyer? Being a software engineers is way more fun! =)

Regardless, I wouldn't worry about it because software engineers will be
automating away lawyers soon anyway. ;)

------
whyme
1\. Lawyers incur more liability with their work.

2\. The quantity of workload they provide per job is less, thus pricing is
more dense (i.e. companies realize programmers work thousands of hours for a
project and that the project viability would collapse at $700/hr)

3\. In many cases you have no choice but to hire a lawyer, while more often
you can say no to a programmer should the economics not support the project.

4\. A lawyer has to go to school for approx. 6 to 8 years (at least in Canada)
while programmers have a wide variety of education levels.

I'm sure I could list more...

~~~
kichik
That is my understanding as well. Liability costs a lot. Think insurance
costs, the costs you'd have to pay for every mistake, etc. "It's not a bug,
it's a feature" doesn't cut it when someone's freedom or fortune is at stake.

------
lukevdp
I charge $100/hr and I'm nowhere near a top developer. I'm sure the top
developers are charging a lot more

------
swampthing
* law firms are inefficient in their use of technology

* legal work is more likely to be boring, so you have to pay people more to do it (this is related to the first point above)

* if an app has a bug, it's usually easy to spot - if a contract has a bug, you may never know about it until it bites you. so you pay for the best attorney you can get, in the hopes of getting fewer bugs

* lawyers are more at the beck and call of their clients - really need something done overnight or over the weekend? they'll do it (though they'll resent you for it)

~~~
dromidas
Inefficiency is no excuse.

I'm sure there are as many lawyers who love or hate their job as there are
developers that do... some people (like myself) love doing the work but I have
many colleagues who find it tedius and boring. I would say also not an excuse.

Security or data integrity flaws are no more apparent than contract holes, and
often are equally as disruptive.

Developers aren't at the beck and call? Lol I would say that's a
misconception. Late nights and weekends are NO stranger to developers.
Especially in actual companies (vs independent) where deadlines are
approaching its very common to be strongly encouraged (read: required) to work
weekends.

It's more likely that the combination of cheap alternatives (outsourcing,
developer living in a carboard box in san diego, etc) are numerous and you
don't need indepth knowledge to click buttons on your program to see it works
like you wanted it to but you do need all that knowledge to look at a contract
and confirm its legitimacy.

~~~
swampthing
i'm not trying to make excuses for lawyers, i'm just providing you with
reasons.

and as someone who's been both a developer and a lawyer, lawyers are much more
at the beck and call of clients. software engineers generally know when they
have deadlines approaching. lawyers get informed Friday night of a deadline
they have Monday morning (transactional lawyers, that is).

your last sentence is precisely the point i was making re bugs.

------
K0t4
You sure it isnt $700/hr that hes with the client? Not trying to justify it
but theres a lot of backend work like research that goes into legal advice and
that cost is usually lumped in with the cost of the hour he actually talks to
you. Also law school is very expensive and people know that so they can
mentally justify paying more. You can make $100/hr programming and have no
education. Plus their are tons of programmers who make more than $100/hr

------
vannevar
I think this is a transient phenomenon. The software profession is only a few
decades old, while there have been centuries of lawyering. Not all lawyers
make anywhere near $700/hour; in fact, I'd say the average lawyer probably
makes about as much as the average developer. A developer aristocracy has yet
to emerge, but as time goes on you'll see rates at the top end rising much
faster than the average, and there _will_ be $700/hr developers.

------
Terry_B
In addition to the other reasons here, I think when it comes to lawyers and
doctors, people typically want "the best".

Are you willing to take a risk with your health or getting into legal trouble?

So the price of the best people just keeps going up and up.

With developers, there is more of a concept of "good enough". As long as you
find someone that can build the thing and it works, that's good enough.

------
chaz
There's a good thread on Quora about the price of lawyers. Without logging in,
the first answer is available here: [http://www.quora.com/Attorneys/Why-are-
lawyers-so-expensive-...](http://www.quora.com/Attorneys/Why-are-lawyers-so-
expensive-even-with-the-excess-supply-of-lawyers)

The second answer, which is also helpful, uses graphs from these articles,
which helps illustrate the bimodal distribution:
[http://www.gradschools.com/article-detail/worst-reasons-
law-...](http://www.gradschools.com/article-detail/worst-reasons-law-
school-1788) [http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/the-two-
track-l...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/the-two-track-lawyer-
market/)

------
zacaltman
It's a matter of what it's worth to you. What risks are you willing to take?

There are developers who may charge $700/hr, but you've chosen to go with a
developer who charges $100/hr because that's what you need at this stage. If
he made a mistake, it's not likely to cost you EVERYTHING to fix up. Somebody
points out the bug / issue and you can hire him to sort it out and push out an
update. Speak to a developer who works at a law firm ;)

Conversely, people device to go with a $700/hr lawyer because of their
experience and reputation. You're paying for them to not make a mistake
because it may just cost you EVERYTHING. It's not a mistake you can fix after
it's found. Something wrong with your patent? Contract? Not something you can
say 'oops, it's fixed now' to.

------
andrewgjohnson
The problem is there's no lawyers charging extremely low prices in third world
countries and it's exceptionally unlikely that you would hire a lawyer that
isn't within an hour's drive from you. The same can't be said for programmers.

------
davimack
There's a fundamental difference: Billable Hours.

For a lawyer, if they put in 100 hours to come up with a 2-page letter, they
charge for those 100 hours. The next time a client comes to them with a
similar problem, they charge for 100 hours.

Software developers charge for time actually spent working on a particular
project. If they reuse code, they don't (typically) charge anything. If
developers were to charge for the number of hours spent writing that code
they're reusing, they'd be more like lawyers.

------
djblue2009
Even though there may be a surplus of lawyers in general out there, that
specific lawyer can charge that much because (this sounds obvious) people are
willing to pay that much. If he specializes in a certain area with the
potential for a big upside for a client - doesn't have to be monetary - think
immigration law (however, usually these clients can't necessarily pay that
rate), people are willing to pay for peace of mind and hopefully just once for
the job done right.

------
rdouble
He's not really your friend if he's charging you $700 an hour.

------
pasbesoin
If you are using a partner in a "major law firm" for routine contract work,
you're doing it wrong.

(If you use that firm, such work should be turned over to a less senior staff
member and billed at a somewhat lower rate.

If the partner is a friend or friendly acquaintance, s/he might ensure the
assignment is to an attorney (and possibly assisting staff) they respect and
they might look over the results before they are returned to you.)

------
njharman
software eng did/does not have to

go to law school (or take any college really)

pass the bar (or any certification at all)

maintain his membership in bar (or any level of professional conduct or
accountability)

be legally responsible for the work he performs (in same way lawyers, doctors
and other accredited / certification passing professions must)

See also supply and demand. Every half skilled monkey can be an iOS developer
(or any kind of developer. Honestly, it's really not that hard. Compared to
lawyering, doctoring. Also developer != architect, lead, technical manager,
entrepreneur, etc which are all much more difficult. OTOH people who couldn't
hack EE or that drop out of college can be successful developers.)

------
Osmium
Generally, a lawyer has a lot more responsibility that a software engineer.
The repercussions of a bad legal error can be felt for a long time. A software
mistake? easily fixed.

~~~
kefs
Unless, of course..

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-
critical_system#Software_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-
critical_system#Software_engineering_for_life-critical_systems)

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hhuio
Because software people don't ask for more.

developer auction offers I'm getting is 85k to 130k so far, for someone with
close to 10 year experience in the valley! wtf

~~~
cwh
Possibly it's due to your poor grammar?

~~~
hhuio
Well, English is not my first language. btw, I'm making more than double the
lowest bid.

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dahurr
To add what others have said, lawyers went through more schooling at much
expense. $700 is a decent rate for a partner at a top law firm.

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charlesjshort
Corruption, plain and simple. The high price lawyers have to grease the wheels
to ensure the win.

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Mankhool
It is his firm billing him out at $700/hr. He's not putting that full amount
into his pocket.

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alexdmoore
no, you are taking to the wrong person in the firm. You need the more junior
lawyer who can likely do your work too. Major partners are only needed to do
huge deals or very complicated legal procedures. Just ask around.

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azzkicker
You missed out meeting a lawyer early in your life. You didn't get to see his
lifestyle. But I am guessing you did meet a software coder early in life which
left a huge impression. That's all. Remember, life isn't fair... you're a
digital ditch digger! (DDD)or(3D)or(D3)

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ekm2
I do not get the logic most of you are running through:Lawyers have had a lot
more education AND there are many of them out there,so they get paid more?

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znmeb
You want to charge $700 / hour for _programming_? You want to be a
professional in the same sense as a doctor or a lawyer? Fine!

1\. Get a PhD in computer science or software engineering. 2\. Submit to state
licensing, certifications, fees, examinations and codes of conduct. 3\. Buy
liabilty insurance in case your screw-ups hurt someone and they sue your
incompetent ass.

Look, doctors and lawyers have been around at least since civilization arose,
say six to ten thousand years. Programming as a profession independent of,
say, doing math or building weapons systems or accounting has been around only
since the 1950s, and it wasn't till the 1960s that large numbers of people got
paid to do nothing but programming.

~~~
mattquiros
I'm sorry but I fail to see your point and the need to write with that tone.
Prostitutes have been around in civilizations for far longer than doctors and
lawyers and yet they're still not getting paid as much. And the statement that
software engineers "do nothing but programming" reeks of ignorance.

