"FINAL ANSWER..."

The results of the West Virginia State Bar survey were recently presented for public consumption. This survey was a follow-up to the survey that was completed in 1994. It was designed to attempt to track changes in attitude and demographics in the bar membership during the past five year period. I thought that some of the information collected was rather revealing of the practice of law in West Virginia. Also, I thought that it might shed some light on future expectations for young practitioners in this State. The survey was conducted last fall with 4,001 surveys mailed out and 1,649 returned for a response rate of approximately 40%. I hope that you were one of the respondents.
Regardless, here is a short profile of the West Virginia lawyer. If you want more information or would like to review the complete survey, it is available on the West Virginia Bar Association home page at www.wvbar.org.

    Forty percent of the lawyers practicing in the State of West Virginia are under the age of 35. This number is consistent with practitioners on the national level as approximately 40% of the American Bar Association membership are individuals within this age group. With regard to this particular survey, only 25% of the respondents were, however, from this age group.

    Forty-six percent of the lawyers in this State are between the ages of 40 and 55. Of the practicing lawyers, 75% are male and 25% are female. Surprisingly, the number of female attorneys has actually remained almost constant the last 5 years despite the fact that females now make up the majority of the graduating classes of the WVU College of Law. This trend is consistent with the national scene. Unlike the national scene, however, the West Virginia Bar continues to be made up of very few minorities with only 2% of respondents being either African American or other minorities.

    Appreciatively below the national average, 20% of lawyers in West Virginia make $40,000 to $60,000 with the majority, 67%, making less than $100,000. Only 8% report making over $250,000.

    Not surprisingly, 64% of the attorneys in the State attended the West Virginia University College of Law.

    Twenty-five percent of our attorneys practice alone while 58% practice in firms with 5 or fewer lawyers. Sixty-four percent of West Virginia lawyers practice in an area with a population of 25,000 or more.

    The hourly rate charged by attorneys is almost evenly split with 23% charging $91 to $110 per hour and 22% charging $111 to $135 per hour. The majority of contingency fee arrangements falls in the range of 33% to 39% with only 2% of attorneys stating that they charge 40% or more in a contingency case.

    Almost 1/3 of West Virginia lawyers report working 6 days a week with 5% working 7 days a week. In terms of fringe benefits, the survey shows a marked increase in attorneys receiving retirement disability benefits. In 1992, retirement benefits were offered to only 25% of respondents. By 1999, the number had risen to 52%. The figure for disability benefits rose from 7% to 29%.

    An overwhelming majority of lawyers believe that the professionalism of lawyers (60%) and the public image of lawyers (57%) have decreased in the past five years. The relationship between public image and lawyer advertising may be a perceived problem since a staggering 57% of respondents oppose lawyer advertising. Granted, however, this number may be somewhat skewed since the question was rather broad and did not specifically ask what types of, if any, advertising would be acceptable.

    Thirteen percent of practicing lawyers do not have liability insurance in the State of West Virginia. Although one would think that the cost of premiums would be a large factor for not maintaining coverage, 62% of those practitioners who do not maintain coverage indicated that they do not do so because they believe that they have little or no exposure due to the nature of their practice. I certainly would like to know the areas of law in which these members practice.

    Of the law firms hiring associates, only 1% have starting salaries over $50,000. Thirty percent pay in the salary range of $30,000 to $45,000. Again, this would put West Virginia well behind the national average. The National Law Journal recently reported that the average starting salary in a large city market was $75,000 plus bonus and, in smaller markets, $65,000. Although 66% of firms in West Virginia have no billable hour requirements, 17% require 1,751 to 2,000 hours and 2% require over 2,000 hours. It appears that lawyers in West Virginia work hard with 49% taking 9 or less days vacation annually.

All this work may not lend much time to pro bono or civic work since the numbers suggest that 39% of practitioners spend less than 5 hours per month on civic or community work and an unbelievable 58% spend less than 5 hours per month on pro bono work. Could it be that these numbers reflect on our image in the public? Since 94% of the respondents agree that lawyers have an overall bad public image, certainly no one can argue that pro bono work or civic duty by lawyers can have a positive effect on that perception.
Finally, the number with which I am most amused and the validity of which I would challenge as an accurate representation of the feelings of young lawyers is the 64% response of attorneys who say that they would choose this profession again if starting over. In my interaction with hundreds of young colleagues over the last 8 years, I have often asked if they would again make this choice of careers. The usual response was no. Although this certainly was not a scientific poll, I would safely conclude from my observations that well over 40% of young lawyers would choose a different profession. This is an alarming result, and the reasons are not so clear. My personal observations are that many young lawyers had an unrealistic expectation of what the practice of law would actually be like, have been discouraged or become disenchanted by the lack of professionalism in the practice, or believe that the financial reward for the work expended in practicing law is disproportionate to other professions; particularly, when you factor in stress. Whatever the reasons, these numbers seem to be reflected in the number of young adults entering professional schools. Law school admissions are dramatically down across the country. It is my understanding that there were only 300 applications for the 130 or so positions in the new classes at the WVU College of Law as opposed to the 1,800 or 2,000 applications annually filed in the early 1990's.
As an aside, I thought this one should go down as a lesson on how the practice of law gets black eyes. This appeared in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal on July 6, 1999:
A former inmate at the Spartanburgh County, S.C. jail has filed a lawsuit saying officials negligently failed to supervise him while he engaged in horseplay alone in his cell. Torrence Johnson, of Rock Hill, who was in jail after his arrest on charges of driving with a suspended license and another traffic infraction, says he fell and broke a vertebra with resulting paralysis. "If jail personnel had done a better job of supervising him, Johnson claims, he never would have been able to engage in the ‘horseplay' that paralyzed him." "He stood up on a desk in his cell and was cutting back flips off of it," said jail director Larry Powers. "With the small number of detention officers we have, there's no way that we can constantly monitor every inmate continuously around the clock."

Tom Langhorne, "Paralyzed man blames jail for injury", Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald-Journal, July 6, 1999.