It used to be that the number that best defined a CEO was the net total on his or her paycheck. Today, however, fallen execs are finding their lives more aptly summed up by the number of years they'll be spending in prison as judges use new sentencing guidelines to lock up white-collar crooks.

But just as pay packages vary greatly among corporate honchos, so too do the length of corporate-crime sentences judges are setting — a fact that's raising eyebrows among some legal experts, according to the Chicago Tribune.

WorldCom's Bernard Ebbers, for example, will be behind bars for 25 years while HealthSouth's Michael Martin is in for a mere seven days. Certainly these were two separate cases, but the extremes in sentencing underline new federal guidelines that give judges greater leeway in setting penalties. They also, some experts say, highlight a pervasive and problematic attitude about how to handle white-collar criminals.

"We've never figured out how we feel about white-collar offenders," says Ohio State University law professor Douglas Berman. "We're not sure how we [should] judge them."

One thing that is certain — regardless of attitudes toward the perpetrators — sentences for big-biz crimes are getting stiffer. Before 1987, 60-70 percent of those charged with "federal economic crimes" received probation, according to University of Missouri at Columbia law professor Frank Bowman.

With penalties for Enron's Kenneth Lay and media mogul Conrad Black still to come, judges may not be done setting records for doing time. Of course hope springs eternal in the land of billable hours and defense lawyer James E. Felman thinks penalties have peaked. "Judges will be going down more than up," he says.

The cost of living may be rising, but the living itself is still easy for high-priced lawyers who've seen their hourly fees soar more like a speeding bullet than anything akin to the actual rate of inflation, the Washington Post reports.

Topping the list of power players — whose clients are power 'payers' — is former U.S. Attorney Benjamin R. Civiletti who pulls in $1,000 an hour for his work at D.C.'s Venable law firm. Of course, if those rates are too high for a cash-strapped Beltway bigwig, Patton Boggs will happily provide its legal services for only $800 an hour. Typically, however, D.C. firms offer much more accessible rates, with the average somewhere around $500 an hour, the Post reports.

Columbia University law professor John C. Coffee Jr. says that the rates seem high when taken out of context, but against the backdrop of the multibillion-dollar verdicts trial lawyers can win, the rates aren't so bad.

Patton Boggs managing partner Stuart Pape agrees: "If you calculate the rates in those situations, they make Civiletti's rate look cheap." And what does Civiletti think of the big bucks he's pulling down in the private sector? "We have soldiers to do soldiers' work, majors to do majors' work and generals to do generals' work," he says.

While Civiletti and his colleagues at Venable may be enjoying their recent salary increase, a new survey by Robert Half Legal finds that overall it is midsize and small law firms — not the big-city behemoths — that have seen the biggest jumps in income for senior lawyers over the past year.

In fact, the survey finds that lawyers with four or more years' experience saw pay gains of 4.4 percent at midsize firms from 2005-06, giving them a salary range of $89,250 to $144,000 per year. Their counterparts at small firms saw gains of anywhere from 7.2 percent to 8.5 percent, with annual salaries from $59,250 to $107,250.

For lawyers more recently released from law school, however, the bigger firms paid bigger bucks. First-year associates at a large law firm saw salaries jump 6.8 percent while associates with up to three years' experience at the same firms saw an increase of 6 percent.

Big government is trying to take a bite out of big business' big salaries. Legislation recently introduced by Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) would give shareholders a say in executive pay packages, according to the Los Angeles Times .

Specifically, the Protection Against Executive Compensation Abuse Act would require public companies to submit executive compensation plans for shareholder approval; specify the criteria on which exec's incentive pay is based; and disclose the "full-market value" of corporate perks.

"This is not an assault on corporate America," Frank says. "It empowers stockholders to get a handle on pay. This is all about enlightened self-interest. We're telling companies you have to do a better job. But we are not prescribing a particular solution."

In the opposite corner of the corporate ring, lobbying groups such as the Business Roundtable are already gearing up to go a few rounds against the bill.

Meanwhile the AFL-CIO and Institutional Shareholder Services are gearing up to back Frank as the bill moves through the Congress.

Rumors of the death of high-rolling CEO may have been exaggerated. While screaming headlines and posturing prosecutors may be repeatedly touting the toppling of extravagant CEOs, there seems to be an unending stream of big-spenders peeling off the greenbacks.

The latest evidence is media mastermind Conrad Black, the Sun Times reports of the man who headed the Chicago paper. Recently indicted on mail and wire fraud charges, Black fit the profile of the CEO gone wild, lavishly spending company dollars.

Among Black's indulgences are $13,935 champagne and a Park Avenue apartment, as well as houses in Florida and London. Most ostentatious, however, may be Black's assuming the name "Lord Black of Crossharbour" and acquiring a seat in the House of Lords. Hopefully for Black, "lords" get preferential seating in prison cafeterias.

It might be a "typical" phenomenon in the eyes of economic experts, but that doesn't make paying the bills any easier for workers who continue to see their paychecks lag behind the rate of inflation even as the economy is reported to be rebounding, according to U.S. News & World Report. With inflation at 3.5 percent, wages have only gone up, on average, 3.2 percent over the past year.

Experts say that workers' not being able to cash in on economic gains is normal in a time of recovery because companies are reluctant to buy into good news too soon.

"Companies want to make sure that they are going into a period that is as good or better than this year before they start spending money," says Salary.com's Bill Coleman.

But companies' caution may not be the only motivation behind stagnating salaries. Rising health care costs are also playing a role in keeping paychecks flat.

"As long as we are going to pay more and more on the benefits side, then wages are not going to go up," says Bill Dunkelberg of the National Federation of Independent Business.

Billions? Millions? Once you reach a certain point, who really counts? Apparently we didn't in the last issue of BLT. Turns out Wal-Mart revenues were actually in the billions, not the millions as we reported. We regret the error and send Wal-Mart a million apologies. Or is that billions?