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Lawyers have little to complain about these days. Law firms are adding jobs, and salaries are climbing. True, there are some black spots — in California, where the dot-com collapse rippled through law firms, there are about 8 percent fewer lawyers employed today than there were four years ago. But across the country, lawyers are making out very well.
The same can’t necessarily be said for paralegals and legal secretaries, however. Nationwide, payrolls have grown by more than 15 percent, but incomes have dropped. In New York, for instance, where there are about 2,000 more paralegals working today than in 2000, real wages have dropped by nearly 20 percent.