In America, above all else, the legal system should be fair, but instead, it’s big business.

Also, compromising with the legal system shouldn’t be a major financial decision, but for millions of people in the United States, it is. However, it is also hard to imagine that this grim reality was one of the original goals set forth by those able gentlemen who created and signed the Declaration of Independence while pursuing the dream of a country that could consistently provide the opportunities for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in equal doses for all.

Unfortunately, the legal system that has evolved in the United States guarantees the same protection, representation, or opportunity to each and every citizen. Perhaps, when founded, the legal system should have been dispensed with and replaced instead by notions of a justice system. In a justice system, the fair assumption would be that fairness determined by reasonable peers would prevail. In stark contrast to a justice system, the modern legal system allows the people with the most money to prevail. And this simply does not often lend itself to any form of justice, however remote that form may be.

If a person googles “average hourly cost of a lawyer,” that person will learn that a lawyer in rural areas can earn between $100 and $200 an hour, while more skilled lawyers in big cities are in the range. average $400 to $600 per hour. Extrapolating this information to a 40-hour work week for a year, the lowest-paid full-time lawyers on the lawyer totem pole earn more than $200,000 per year ($100 per hour x 40 hours per week x 52 weeks per year = $208 000). When considering this dark reality, it quickly becomes obvious that the average citizen does not have the means to pay even the cheapest lawyer for any significant period of time.

Upon closer examination of the facts, we must consider wages and salaries. The minimum wage varies from state to state. According to the 2016 National Conference of State Legislatures, two states have passed laws to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour. California was the first state to pass such laws. This state has now formally required employers to pay $15 per hour by January 1, 2022. New York quickly followed suit, passing legislation requiring employers to pay $15 per hour by July 1, 2020. This means that once the minimum wage is raised, wage earners in each of these states will be able to pay for a low-cost rural lawyer for 39 days by spending a full year of earned wages ($15 per hour x 40 hours per week x 52 weeks per year = $31,200 per year / $100 per hour per attorney year = 312 total hours / 8 hours per workday = 39 days). However, if someone in a large city needs to hire a lawyer and earns $15 per hour, that person can pay for a lawyer for less than 10 days by spending an entire year of earned wages ($15 per hour x 40 hours per week x 52 weeks per year = $31,200 per year / $400 per hour for an attorney = 78 total hours / 8 hours per work day = 9.75 days). Clearly, the minimum wage earner will have no fair or adequate representation, for any real period of time in the current legal (not justice) system, against any major entity whose coffers may be very sparsely filled with rotten cash.

According to the US Census Bureau, the real (inflation-adjusted) median household income in the United States was $51,939 (or $24.97 per hour) in 2013. The Attorney Fee Survey Report US Consumer Law for 2013-2014, published statistics on attorney fees by geographic region. It also separated small and large companies into different categories. The lowest average hourly rate available from any law firm in the United States is $253 (available in the Pacific states of AK, HI, and WA), which is billed by small firms. Whereas, the highest average hourly rate required by law firms in the United States is $546, billed by large firms in the Northeast (CT, MA, MD, ME, NH, RI, and VT). This means that the average American income, at the cheapest average hourly rate in the United States, could afford legal representation for less than 26 days ($51,939 annually / $253 per hour for an attorney = 205.29 total hours / 8 hours per work) day = 25.66 days), while the humble, average, full-time attorney billing $253 per hour earns $526,240 per year ($253 per hour x 40 hours per week x 52 weeks per year).

And, if a person needs legal representation or was falsely accused of a crime and needs a defense, that person faces a painful reality. But don’t forget that this pendulum swings both ways, just ask OJ Simpson, who may have bought himself out of a murder conviction by spending an exorbitant amount of money on attorney fees.

Also, keep in mind that this disparity doesn’t stop with these details. Moving away from the low to average range of attorney fees forces our attention only in the upward direction. A large group of lawyers easily earn over $1,000 an hour, and many proponents of a fair legal system claim to bill twice that amount. For example, notorious bankruptcy lawyer Theodore Olsen (although I bet all his friends just call him Teddy the Bankruptcy Bear) is on record for billing $1,800 an hour, according to court documents in the LightSquared Inc wireless network bankruptcy case. Introduced in 2012. But the thick, brown gravy train doesn’t even stop to look at that billable fare as it rolls along gilded tracks. Berge Setrakian and Ralph Ferrara were reported to have earned approximately $12.5 million in 2011. Again, simple math tells us that a person earning $12.5 million, working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks out of the year, earns $6,009.62 per hour, which makes a teacher’s salary pale in humble comparison.

Additional figures that do not bode well for most Americans in need of legal representation are the following supplemental facts. According to the US Embassy.gov website, the average time for a jury trial is 4 days for civil cases and 5 days for criminal cases (at least, as of 2009). However, cases do not start at trial and often take a considerable amount of time to get there. To help illustrate this point, a person must first be prosecuted. After the arraignment, the preliminary hearing phase usually lasts 5-6 days. In the case of misdemeanor charges, the next step in the legal system is the motions and hearing phase. This generally takes 3 months, but can also exceed 2 years, during which time an attorney bills the client to file court documents and respond to documents filed by the opposing legal team. Based on this reality, the average American may be out of cash long before the case even goes to trial, in which case, justice is not part of fate and possibly never made it onto the map of the legal landscape.

For businesses, this dynamic is even worse, because many states allow a person to file a “proper” return on behalf of a business. This means that a person or owner chooses to represent themselves, even though state law clearly requires that a business be represented by an attorney in a court of law. In systems like these, the individual can file the case on behalf of a company and start paying court fees only to learn at a later date that a lawyer is required to move the case forward. These legal systems actually cause financial damages and damages to the person suffering, in addition to the actual damages that caused the case to be filed in the first place. With a modicum of expectation, one should be able to assume that compromising with the legal system, itself, should not inflict further financial injury on the already injured party, but it does.

That said, it’s not just the structure of the laws that mocks the legal system, it’s also the system itself. Fortunately, in an effort to dig deeper into the immensity of this daunting problem, we can also turn to the US federal government for more information. Twice a year, it publishes statistics on the Federal Court System. Note, however, that these statistics do not include any of the non-federal courts, such as state and municipal courts.

First, understand that there are 9 different federal court systems:
1. US Courts of Appeals
2. US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
3. US District Courts – Civil
4. US District Courts – Criminal
5. Courts of the Federal Parole System
6. US Bankruptcy Courts
7. Federal Courts Pre-Trial Services
8. US District Courts – Grand and Junior Juries
9. US Federal Courts.

And let’s not forget that the first court on that list consists of thirteen different courts:
1. US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
2. US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
3. US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
4. US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
5. United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
6. US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
7. US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
8. US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
9. US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
10. US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
11. US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
12. United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
13. Supreme Court of the United States (Court of Final Appeal)

After a quick glance, it becomes quite apparent that a person not only needs a lawyer to understand the laws and the intent of those laws, a person may also need the assistance of a lawyer to understand the purpose of each of these courts and the appropriate one. place to start looking for “justice” by filing a case in the right court, as there are so many to choose from.

Truly, it is unfortunate that a person literally has no individual rights unless that person knows the law, and most Americans cannot afford a lawyer to know the law. So how free is the land of the free and the home of the brave when freedom and fair legal representation require money to achieve?