There is a lot of ignorance about lawyers' pay, how much lawyers earn and why.
Here is how lawyers generally get paid.
Flat rate -- the client agrees to pay the lawyer a specific dollar rate to handle a matter (usually not a litigation matter). The client pays that rate no matter what and the lawyer must perform the work. This works for matters in which the overall amount of work can be estimated fairly easily.
Hourly rate -- the client agrees to pay the lawyer an hourly rate. The lawyer tracks his or her time (usually in tenths of an hour), bills at the end of the month, and the client pays the hourly rate. This is often how defense lawyers charge the insurance companies or corporations that hire them to defend their insureds or themselves. The client may negotiate a reduced rate or ask to have a discount on the overall bill or a reduction in the number of hours billed, but the client is usually bound by contract to pay the time billed. Litigation is difficult. Each case has its own problems. A lawsuit over some small thing can consume a lot of lawyer time, so the bills can really mount up surprisingly fast. Most ordinary people cannot afford to pay the hourly rate to a lawyer to handle a case. It is hard to predict at the outset whether a case will involve a lot of work or be quickly resolved. A lawyer can only afford to agree to bill an hourly rate for work if the lawyer is pretty sure the client can and will pay.
Contingency fee -- the client agrees to pay the lawyer a percentage of the amount that the lawyer wins either at trial or through a settlement process. Generally, plaintiff's attorneys like Edwards work on this basis, mostly because ordinary people can't pay the hourly rate. The hours just add up too fast. As I said, a trial lawyer has a lot of costs. For example, he or she has to maintain an office, pay some staff, cover bar and continuing education fees, professional insurance (costs the sun and the moon) maintain a library, pay for Lexis or another internet research service and support him- or herself and the family. And when the lawyer works on a contingency basis, he or she pays all of these costs up front. If a case is really good, and the lawyer is really good, the judge and jury are fair, if, if, if . . . . then maybe the lawyer wins and gets a share of the money. If the defendant has no money, if anything goes wrong, the lawyer loses -- big. It is a gamble. That is why lawyers do not take cases unless the return on winning promises to be good. The risk is just too great. (I often wonder about the number of lawyers who went broke suing the tobacco companies.)
I suggest that those who think trial lawyers don't deserve their pay read the book, The Buffalo Creek Disaster by Gerald Stern. That case was actually settled pretty quickly. A lawyer can wait a long, long time to actually get paid. Just getting the verdict is the first step. Once you have it, you have to enforce it. That can be even harder than getting the verdict.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Creek_FloodEdwards was an excellent lawyer and got good verdicts. He probably worked on contingency and his pay was a percentage of the verdicts. His clients also got a percentage of the verdicts. Do you see now why lawyers prefer to litigate for high verdicts? Litigation is risky, and the lawyer works really, really hard.