Lawyers in US – Side work on the rise

While the pace of hiring has slowed for full-time, salaried lawyers, the numbers of lawyers who do legal work on the side while holding down other jobs is growing rapidly. Nationwide, EMSI estimates jobs for those who draw miscellaneous income as lawyers (income that isn’t derived from their primary job) have grown 25% since 2009 and have more than doubled since 2001. Median earnings for these workers are $35.62 an hour, nearly $20 less than salaried lawyers.

California and Texas combined have more than a fifth of lawyers who work on the side, according to EMSI’s extended proprietor data. California alone has added nearly 6,000 of these positions since 2009, a 37% increase. New York, a state with more than 10,000 on-the-side lawyers, has grow even more (51%).

But no state compares to the wild growth of Vermont, where our estimate of on-the-side lawyers has gone from less than 50 in 2009 to nearly 500 in 2013. We’ve already touched on Vermont’s struggling legal job market, and this seems to be further evidence that lawyers in the state are turning to side or part-time gigs with the decline of full-time opportunities.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at The Job Market For Lawyers: Side Work On The Rise Amid Continuing Glut Of New Grads – Forbes.