This paper reviews and analyzes extant data on the effective hourly rates achieved from contingency fee cases and reports detailed analyses of data from a survey of Wisconsin contingency fee practitioners. The analyses emphasize the need to examine returns across sets of cases rather than on a...

The current study examines earnings differences for practicing lawyers by undergraduate major with a focus on economics majors. Some majors do much better than others. Economics majors tend to do very well in both median and mean earnings, and both without and with controlling for individual...

The effect on turnover and performance is analyzed for U.S. attorneys in office during the years 1969 through 1999. Lower salaries are shown to increase the turnover of U.S. attorneys, and higher turnover is shown to reduce output. Two features distinguish U.S. attorneys, and higher turnover is...

Nearly everyone thinks that judges are underpaid, but theory and evidence provide little support for this view. Theory suggests that increasing judicial salaries will improve judicial performance only if judges can be sanctioned for performing inadequately or if the appointments process reliably...