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> outrageous prices ranging from $200 to $600 per hour and some asking for a $25k retainer upfront!

I hate to tell you this, but that’s not at all outrageous. And you get what you pay for.

For a small business, heck for most of us, that’s too much

I'm not in law so I don't know how the price is calculated, but how can this be fair when the highest neurosurgeon wage is 192 usd per hour on ziprecruiter?

Maybe the decent neurosurgeons aren’t on ziprecruiter, I dunno. But $200/hour is absolutely nothing for a lawyer. Even a smallish/midsize firm is going to be billing out first-year associates higher than that. $600/hour is pretty ordinary.

And just to be clear, this is what the law firm charges for a lawyer’s time. It’s not the take home pay for the lawyer.

> And just to be clear, this is what the law firm charges for a lawyer’s time. It’s not the take home pay for the lawyer

Ah, that makes more sense. I know someone who worked in finance. Her employer charged clients 500 euros per hour for her work and she saw around a fifth of that

Most surgeons are self employed. Employees usually make less than business owners. I know personally several surgeons earning around $5 million per year.

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