Suddenly I understand!
Back when Thomas first started talking to his family about my family his mother had seemed somewhat astounded that my brother had decided to become a criminal lawyer. Incredulous that anyone could go to the bother of studying long and hard to go into a profession that didn't pay well, she wondered why he hadn't opted for boring old tax or insurance law like her own high-earning sister. When Thomas explained that criminal defence pays well in the UK she didn't understand how it could given that criminals of this type, by definition, can't afford to pay lawyers hundreds of pounds an hour and people who could afford such bills didn't tend to go about mugging people or burgling their houses.
This morning Radio 2's news headline was the Sun's newspaper's condemnation of the Labour party. Not a Sun-reader, I clicked on it out of curiosity and got their slide show of Labour failures. Screen 2 explained immediately why criminal lawyers in general were not earning the pitiful salaries my mother-in-law expected. I must look into how these other countries' legal systems manage to work on such a tight shoestring...
2 comments:
Perhaps lawyers in other countries supplement their income by busking? ;-)
You can get £70 an hr busking? - jesus - I would only need to work a third of my hours! I'm away to buy a guitar and a waterproof jacket... and when I get back I'll explain to the kids why uni is probably pointless for most degrees ;-)
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