Lowe Law Solutions

What’s a lawyer worth?

I may never have asked a more loaded question.

The answer, as most lawyers would tell you, is, “It depends . . .” It depends, of course, on the standard of measurement you use. In its blog, DataGenetics suggests that the value of the chemical elements that make up the human body was about $160 when the article was written sometime around 2013. On the other hand, in rural north-central West Virginia where I practice, lawyeredu.org data places the median income for lawyers at $59,050 for the 290 attorneys in that area. So, by these standards my value in the geography where I practice is somewhere between $160 and $59,050 on a chemical-socioeconomic scale.

But this analysis begs the question: Are there any other ways to measure the value of an attorney. The old joke is, everybody hates lawyers until they need one. There is a large nugget of truth in that old cliché. Sam Glover, in his blog post, “Why Are Lawyers So Expensive? I’ll Tell You Why,” suggests that attorneys are expensive (another possible measuring standard for value) because they lift their clients’ burdens and place them on their own shoulders. In other words, your problem becomes my problem and you don’t have to worry about it anymore (or at least you don’t have to worry about it as much). So, in this sense I suppose the value of your attorney is proportional to the size of your problem or the accomplishment of your objective.

This second standard for setting the value of the lawyer you engage is, I believe, a valuable tool in deciding who you should choose for your matter, at least initially—but probably not in the way you’re thinking. I suggest that you review your potential attorney’s qualifications, eliminate those that do not meet your needs, and then evaluate the remaining candidates on the basis of their cost compared to the value of your matter. In this way you will likely find the best value for your hard-earned dollar.