There is an ongoing conversation on the poor earning power of lawyers and this comes up often

On Twitter, if you say you are a lawyer, half the people on the TL can measure (almost accurately) your salary range

It’s an open secret.
But you know why it hasn’t changed?

LAWYERS!!

Law firms accounts for one of the most toxic work environment.
Reminds me of Jay-Z’s track “The story of OJ”

Lawyers are always in competition.
Toxic competition.

Bosses use the Divide and Conquer tactics for lawyers and it’s works perfectly.

Very few firms sane.

The bigger the firm, the more the resources your colleague will invest to bring you down or in the very least, to climb over you.

Lawyers always want lawyers to be subservient.
Lawyers won’t even admit their poor salary to their mate doing better and can help.

Lawyers... hmmm.

I can go on forever.

Lawyers will happily embarrass you in front of a client they don’t want just to show them that you know nothing.

Key word: they don’t even want to steal the client.

And for the client they want to steal, lawyers will withhold information to ridicule you.

In the mighty firms you know and aspire to work in, when big briefs come in, the amount of lobbying and backbiting that goes on just so they will have their name as “one of the lawyers that worked on that project”.

There are exceptions but they are like 3%

I can go on.

The Legal industry is just a mirror depiction of the a Nigerian Society.

The older lawyers are treating younger ones anyhow and younger ones are aspiring to become like the older ones so they can treat the younger and less lucky ones like shit.

It’s a cycle.

So basically, your most vocal lawyer in the struggle is one appointment away from abandoning and forgetting everything about the struggle.

Every (most) lawyer is trying get into the door and most importantly, shut the door against whoever is behind him for as long as possible.

There is no industry in Nigeria that sustains the “Clique” system like the Legal industry.

Even the people earning 35k per month will look for every opportunity to deride the guy earning 27k.

And when the earnings route does not favor them, they resort to seniority at the bar.

Every other Lawyers borrow money to buy new suits and white shirts and even squeeze themselves in horrible accommodation arrangements to attend the National conference.

You would think they are going to talk about how to better their fortune.

Nope. It’s just a show off fest.

They go there, lie to eachother, gloss over the important issues and come back to the horrible working conditions with no positive impact at all.

A lawyer that was your guy all of a sudden become promoted to one fancy role with 10k more salary than you and he thinks he’s Gani.

Wanna know how terrible it can be?

Some firms will be doing well with great (lawfirm standard) work culture and all.

Then they hire a senior person from somewhere and that don’t understand sanity.

What do they do?
They introduce chaos and scatter everything.

Amen?

You join a big lawfirm and the first thing to do is to align yourself with a clique
If not, with your first class, you will die a natural death

Have you seen lawyer beer parlour conversations?

All they do is brag about what they worked on and how unintelligent other lawyers are

I’ll stop.

But this rubbish earnings in Nigeria will not stop.
Atleast not now.

Not while lawyers are charging clients far less than ideal just to draw them away from their former lawyers.

Where lawyers tell clients they can lick feet better than the former foot licker