In the UK, lawyers mean salary is
below the national average. A couple of years ago it was 25k GBP / $40k. Lawyers salaries get a reputation of being high because most people don't realise that:
1) most lawyers do not work in front-facing roles in law firms. They are in house counsel, or consultants, or work in finance or employment or for charities or many other fields where salaries are low.
2) the hourly rates they see are 2-3 times higher than the lawyers salary on the low end. In big law firms the multiple is much higher, because there's a massive amount of support staff (e.g. my ex practised at a law firm big enough to have a 24/7 team to print documents, 24/7 IT support helpdesk for staff etc.), and because that's how the partners make their profit.
3) there's a small core of really, really expensive lawfirms that gets all the headlines. E.g. in the UK we have the "Magic Circle" lawfirms (the five largest UK firms - of which 4 are in the top 10 largest lawfirms worldwide - the rest of the top ten are US firms), then the "Silver Circle", and then the rest. The Magic Circle lawfirms have training contracts that pay in the GBP 40k+ range, and 1 year post-qualification lawyers can earn 60k-100k (GBP). Salaries then tend to go up by huge steps every 6-12 months, so up to several hundred k GBP for senior associates, and a couple of million for partners in some of these firms. Far more for equity partners in some niche firms. Now consider the mean salary again, and consider how much these firms pull it up...
4) many of the "best" paying firms works people to the bone, and so absolute salaries are high, but hourly rates are not. My ex. qualified at one of the Magic Circle firms, and though she made more than twice the UK average salary, two years out of university, she worked so many hours that her hourly rate was less than what her secretary was paid (she's since shifted to a non-practising role in the same firm for exactly this reason; coming home at 3am was not enough to make the money worth it). She was billed out at 200 GBP per hour, but her salary was fixed, so of course it was in the firms interest to work people as hard as possible. And everyone in these firms are asked if they will "voluntarily" sign away the EU Working Time Directive restrictions (UK has an exception from the Working Time Directive that allows UK employers to do this; in theory it is illegal to punish staff for not signing a waiver; then there's practice). She could easily earn in her yearly salary for the firm in 5 weeks of billing.