[leonroy]

I deal with a fair few lawyers here (in the UK) and most of them are in their 40s and 50s - freelancing between multiple firms or their own small one man firm and billing £100-200 per hour. Their businesses make money from their billable hours - if they're sick - tough luck.

Most of the bills I get are in the region of ~£500 and for that I get a 5-10 page legal document or in depth review of some semi-complex legal matter which took them a day and then some several hours back and forth of revisions - all included in that price.

Visiting their offices is far from glamorous - most are literally piled high with document boxes (a dozen easily) and their desks the same. None of them wear Rolexes or fancy suits. I certainly don't get the impression that they're making bank - just that they're doing okay, same as your average software engineer or white collar job.

The office juniors in these small legal firms do commensurately less well than that...

Now there are big city firms which doubtless do very well and where partners do better than your average lawyer - but then outliers like that are the same in any industry.