It is everyone’s dream job to land a gig in one of the many easiest and highest paying fields of law. Not only are lawyers well-respected, but they also bag an incredible pay package that leaves the rest of us green with envy. And it does not stop there. If we were to list all the perks of being a lawyer here in this article, we would run short of words. Hence it is little surprise that many think of their lawyer friends and dream that we were working in that well-paid profession too.
But being a lawyer is not all fun and games. It takes a tremendous amount of hard work as well as an almost genius-level intellect to successfully complete the training required to become a certified lawyer. Between all the work you have to do in school to get a Bachelor’s degree, to taking the law school admission test, to actually having the fortitude to pass through law school, to managing to pass the state bar exam, to becoming an apprentice in a big-shot law firm, you sure have to jump through a lot of hoops before you get the privilege of calling yourself a lawyer. Just the thought of the years of rigorous training might make prospective law students shudder and second-guess.
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But consider this, becoming a lawyer is not just about putting yourself through the wringer. It is also about beating out competition from your colleagues for those precious few coveted positions in the field that pay the most to lawyers. We know how picky those elite law firms can be when it comes to picking new hires and it is conceivable that from a whole batch of law students, some will have to miss out on that lucrative job posts. Imagine having to put up will all the torments of law school and finally having to settle in a field of law does not pay as well.
If you are a practicing lawyer and find yourself in this boat, it could be hard to pick yourself up. But perhaps a change of scenery might help you get a fresh start and revitalize your career. You might want to check out these 11 Cities With The Highest Demand for Lawyers. Who knows? Maybe a new city will bring with itself new opportunities.
But if you are someone who is fresh to the field of law and are shopping around for the best field to step into that pays well and has low stress levels, or are a legal professional who is tired of your chosen field and want to move to an easier, more well-paying field, then we have compiled a list of fields that might just be perfect for you.
We know life is hard enough without the thought of law school and failure keeping you awake at night. This is why we dug deep and bring to you the best industries that pay the most to lawyers, yet at the same time are easy to get into.
In coming up with our list of easiest and highest paying fields of law, we consulted the dataset available on the United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics website which provided the data from May 2016. We combed through the list of industries that pay the most to lawyers. Yet to fulfill the criterion of whether the job was easy as well, we only looked at hourly wage rate so that you only have to put in the hours that you are happy with. At the same time, we also applied a filter of only choosing the occupational fields that employed over 1000 lawyers. The logic was that the more number of legal professionals employed in the field, the easier it would be for people to get into that field. This is why fields such as Scheduled Air Transportation and Industrial Machinery Manufacturing don’t make the list because they hire less than a 1000 lawyers even though both of them pay above $100 per hour in average salary.
Before we proceed with the list of easiest and highest paying fields of law, let us just mention the other fields that did not manage to make the list but deserve an honorable mention for sure:
General Medical and Surgical Hospitals ($79.25/hour mean wage), Real Estate ($76.89/hour mean wage), Private Educational Services ($76.24/hour mean wage)
