When it comes to lawyer billing by mega-firms in New York, everyone talks about a magic number, called $1,000 an hour. Which evokes the George Gershwin line, "Nice work if you can get it!"

Out in the provinces, where the small and medium-size law firms ply their trade, it's a different story entirely, according to a study by American Lawyer Media Research.

First, the good news: Average billing rates at these firms, which top out at 170 lawyers, are a mere $240 an hour. Such a bargain!

(It's certainly much less than the cost of designer handbags in New York, where scurrilous Europeans are taking advantage of the weak dollar to buy up so many Prada and Bottega Veneta pocketbooks for resale abroad that retailers are limiting the number that anyone can buy in one month. But I digress.)

Now, for the bad news about the American Lawyer survey, which polled lawyers online and got 5,000 web responses. First of all, 78 percent of those polled turn out to be male. And the mere 22 percent of female lawyers "consistently bill lower than males, regardless of firm size, geography and—with a few exceptions—practice area," according to American Lawyer Research.

The differences were most alarming among the litigators, where the women bill out at $126 an hour, while the men command a whopping $656 on average.

The numbers are less egregious for other practices. Women who practice family law, for example, bill out at $227 an hour; that is mere dollars behind men, who charge an average of $231.

If you've got an estate plan in mind, you might want to consider hiring a woman from one of these firms: They bill at an average of $101 an hour, while men charge $272.

But let's hear it for women who represent the beverage industry. According to the survey, they bill out at $500 an hour, compared with a little more than $200 an hour for men. (Perhaps they are also compensated with free beer.)

All of this seems a bit Beaver Cleaver, or Big Blue, with a dateline back to 1960. So we placed a call to the Utah Bar Association. Lawyers from Salt Lake City were among the top responders to the ALM survey, and ... well, it happens that there is a film festival going on there right now.

Yvette Diaz, an officer of the Utah Bar and an associate at Salt Lake City's Jones Waldron Holbrook & McDonough, for one, hasn't seen evidence of what the ALM study has reported.

"It's done automatically for the men and the women," she says of increases in billing rates. Associates start out at $150 an hour, and move on from there, she says. The firm has 74 lawyers, 13 of whom are female. "In my firm, I have not seen that," she said of the ALM survey, adding, "I am very lucky in that regard."

How much do you think Atticus Finch charged his clients? Much more than Harper Lee, herself a law school graduate? Kind of a funny question, considering it's 2008.

by Karen Donovan

(Image from the cover of the 2007 ALM Research Survey Report: Billing Rates & Practices.)