I know that its hard to fathom paying a lawyer 4x what a teacher makes, but thats the market rate. If the lawyer decided to work for a firm in CC, he/she could make much more than that and the salary needs to be competitive to attract decent talent.

I'll give you an example from medical/healthcare sector that I work in. Several of Philadelphia's smaller hospitals and nursing facilities are having trouble hiring an experienced director or operations management as they cannot afford what these people could be paid by a larger facility. The hospitals/facilities are stuck hiring inside (to people that don't have "business"/MBA experience) or outside (to people that don't have real-life experience/top talent/hospital operations knowledge).

When it comes to being sued, the school system would rather pay for a better insurance policy (ie better lawyer).