"A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns."
The Godfather, 1972
As covered in Forbes:
The Feds Lawyer Up - Tracking Uncle Sam's 25,060 'General Attorneys'
by Adam Andrzejewski | Forbes
April 28, 2016
We are working hard to show you the vast size, scope and power of government. Today, it's the $26.2 billion dollars spent on Uncle Sam's lawyers...
OpenTheBooks Snapshot Oversight Report - Lawyered-Up gives transparency to the massive federal legal complex.
Where do these 25,060 attorneys practice? Use our new 'interactive mapping tool' displaying the 25,060 lawyers employed by 200 rank-and-file agencies across the 50 states. Search our interactive map by location.
Snapshot of Our Findings:
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25,060 lawyers on the rank and file federal agency payroll cost taxpayers $3.3 billion last year and $26.2 billion since 2007, plus $130 million in bonuses.
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The average federal lawyer 'earned' $132,817.06 plus bonuses in FY2014.
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The number of federal lawyers exceeds the total public payroll headcount of twelve states including Alaska (25,050); Delaware (23,249); Idaho (20,270); Maine (18,602); Maryland (16,877); Nevada (24,524); New Hampshire (14,694); North Dakota (15,742); Rhode Island (17,073); South Dakota (12,774); Vermont (13,289); and Wyoming (8,500).
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If the feds were a private-sector law firm, they would exceed the TOP 7 Largest Private Law Firms - combined (24,411): Baker & McKenzie (4,363); Yingke (4,153); DLA Piper (3,702); Dacheng (3,700); Norton Rose Fulbright (3,461); CMS Legal Service (2,522); and Jones Day (2,510).
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More than half of the lawyers are located inside the Washington, D.C. beltway.
Read our piece at Forbes, and find out why in The Godfather, Mario Puzo had it right. Today, the heavy boot of government often comes disguised wearing a pair of wingtips delivering intrusive subpoenas devoid of due process.
JOIN THE TRANSPARENCY REVOLUTION. IT'S YOUR MONEY!