A lawyer is one of the highest-paid professionals there is. It takes 4 years of college and 4 years of law school to become a lawyer, and you also have to take the LSAT and Bar Exam, but the payoff is worth it. There are so many types of lawyers that your job opportunities are virtually unlimited when you get licensed as a lawyer in the state you want to practice in. For example, there are academic, admin/office support, contract/temporary, corporate, in-house, partner, and public interest/non-profit. These types of lawyers are only a drop in the bucket compared with all the different specialties there out there. Lawyer salaries are quite high and range in annual salary from $55,000 to $160,000. Some lawyers can earn a million or more per year, and some of the top lawyers in the top law firms, such as partners in international firms, are multi-millionaires. You can be an advocate or adviser as a lawyer. You can also sit away somewhere in an office and just prepare documents and be out of the humdrum chaos of actually interacting with anyone. So while there are lots of specializations, there are also lots of ways of practicing the nature of the work. There are different modes or styles of work that you can key into instead of being locked into just one pattern of interacting. For example, you can be a trial lawyer, administrative lawyer, or in-house counsel. You can go into private practice or be an in-house attorney for a big firm. Some lawyers only handle civil cases so they never work with anyone who has been accused of criminal misconduct. Others work in real estate law. Some are government lawyers and some teach law. Beginning lawyers often start as legal research assistants, law clerks, or small-time salaried positions in law firms. There are almost three quarters of a million lawyers that practice nationwide. Most companies employ lawyers, and governments are always hiring prosecutors and other positions are constantly being filled. The average yearly salary for lawyers was $94,000.