In today’s metro business section, Richmond Times-Dispatch takes a closer look at the legal industry in the Richmond metro region and how Richmond has evolved into a “city of law and order”.

Chmura Economics and Analytics helped Times-Dispatch reporter prepare the story. Chris Chmura provided a series of data regarding the size and wages of the legal industry in the metro area. The paper quoted her in the article, City of Law and Order:

The average salary of people in the legal profession in Richmond was $77,000, compared with an overall average salary here of $44,270 in the third quarter of 2007, according to Chmura Economics & Analytics.

"When people are being paid more, they spend their money," said Christine Chmura, president of the Richmond research firm. "It has a ripple effect."

In a separate story, Legal jobs help drive economy in Richmond, Xiaobing Shuai analyzed how legal industry help create jobs in other industry sectors.

At the end of last year, 5,838 people in the Richmond area were employed in the legal industry. An additional 1,685 workers here support the legal jobs, said Shuai, who analyzed wages, benefits and productivity to compute the numbers.