• FLSA guidelines govern attorneys in most instances.handsome men image by Mat Hayward from Fotolia.com
  
  The Fair Labor Standards Act is a federal employment law that sets a national minimum wage and provides overtime to qualified employees. Several states have also adopted their own, more stringent, state employment laws. These laws also apply to attorneys but apply differently based on whether the attorney is an employee for himself, an employee for someone else such as another attorney, a law firm or a corporation or whether the attorney has his own employees, making him an employer.
  
  

Private Practice

• Many attorneys elect to go into business for themselves and start their own law practice. These attorneys are referred to as solo practitioners. When an attorney opens his own law office and works from himself, he is exempt from all state and federal labor laws. However, if the attorney employs additional workers, such as a secretary, paralegal or an associate attorney, the attorney will have to follow state and federal labor laws as an employer.
  
  

Attorney as an employer

• Attorneys who employ other individuals as part of their practice are employers under state and federal laws and must adhere to certain requirements. For example, an attorney must pay his employee the state-mandated minimum wage, provide overtime to qualified employees and adhere to any other state-mandated employer guidelines.
  
  

Attorney as an employee

• Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employees are entitled to overtime, equivalent to one and a half times the employee's regular hourly rate, for all hours worked beyond a 40-hour maximum in one week. However, the FLSA expressly exempts well-paid salary employees, such a professionals, from this provision. A professional under federal law is someone who is paid at least $455 per week and is required through the course of his employment to use advanced knowledge acquired by "a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction." Attorneys, by nature fit this description as they are employed to use specialized knowledge they learned in law school. Thus, any attorney making more than $455 per week in salary is not entitled to overtime.