Disturbing Slate Article Forum

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

People cite this bi model thing like religion. Please explain how a MEDIAN salary of X is misleading due to "but uhm bi model."

Because few people make the median dude cmon think ab it

No dude, at least 50% of people make the median or better. That's a ton of lawyers.

Bi model throws off average salaries, not median salaries.

[anyriotgirl]

where can I meet this bi model?

[rad lulz]

.

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

where can I meet this bi model?

Nice.

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

People cite this bi model thing like religion. Please explain how a MEDIAN salary of X is misleading due to "but uhm bi model."

Because few people make the median dude cmon think ab it

No dude, at least 50% of people make the median or better. That's a ton of lawyers.

Bi model throws off average salaries, not median salaries.

Dude think b4 u poast

Think for me. At least 50% of lawyers make the median salary or higher. People say bimodal means small percentage 130-160k and huge percentage 40-55k.

Well, no not really, because the median firm salary is 95k. Bimodal is meaningless after you have been practicing a few years.

[cotiger]

Also, Tanicius, that BLS projection of 19,650 a year for the next ten years is frankly ridiculous. The bottom of the recession saw 24,902, and they've been consistently and significantly underestimating the market and bizarrely lowering their projections dispite the fact that they've been horrendously undershooting it.

The current BLS projection is 10% lower than two years ago, when they projected 21,880 new jobs per year between 2010 and 2020. That ten-year prediction was 9% less than an estimate a few years prior that projected 24,040 new lawyer jobs per year between 2008 and 2018.

They estimated 131,140 new jobs from 2008-2013. This period coincided with the worst business cycle of several generations, and yet they still undershot the actual count (159,600) by a staggering 21.7%. It's tough to imagine the market for new hires contracting by 25% in the near future if the Great Recession couldn't even come close (the nadir came in 2011 w/ 24,902.. much more than the 19,650/yr estimated by the BLS).

[jingosaur]

The real reason it's a "good time" to apply is because if you're a decent candidate you can get a top degree on the cheap now like never before. UG grades continue to wildly inflate, LSAT 170+ scorers plummet, and standards at even the top schools decline year by year. For an uninspired grad from an unknown college with at least an A- avg, take the LSAT and hit over 171 and you can take home a huge scholarship from schools with more than two-thirds of the class going to prestigious firms. Just three years ago a 170/3.6 couldn't crack the T14, now they can make it rain.

And if your parents are loaded, there was never a better time to snag a Harvard law degree with minimal effort. They let in a surprising critical mass of crackheads with 173 lsat this yr, whereas in the past it actually really impressive to gain admission (before anyone gets offended, its still really impressive, just different from 2011).

If you want the life of biglaw and someone else is paying tuition/scholarship, it's not a bad time to apply.

This is somewhat true and applicant numbers are starting to reflect this. It looks like the number of applicants with 170+ LSAT scores actually went up this cycle even though the total number of applicants decreased substantially. This cycle was still a competitive cycle historically, it's just that the law school bubble was so big in the 2008 to 2011 time period that all other cycles are comparatively weak.

[brotherdarkness]

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[Caesar Salad]

Think for me. At least 50% of lawyers make the median salary or higher. People say bimodal means small percentage 130-160k and huge percentage 40-55k.

Well, no not really, because the median firm salary is 95k. Bimodal is meaningless after you have been practicing a few years.

I think the idea of the bimodal salary distribution is eluding you.

If 95k is in fact the median, then it is the middle of the set. 50% of salaries are higher, 50% are lower. This doesn't imply normal distribution, those two 50%s can be clustered far away from the median, but if the term median is in fact being used correctly, 50% are above it. If the bimodal thing is going to skew something it would be the mean.

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

Think for me. At least 50% of lawyers make the median salary or higher. People say bimodal means small percentage 130-160k and huge percentage 40-55k.

Well, no not really, because the median firm salary is 95k. Bimodal is meaningless after you have been practicing a few years.

I think the idea of the bimodal salary distribution is eluding you.

I understand it is meant to suggest a misleading median salary, but on TLS the curve that is always provided would suggest a median at around 50k.

I'm rallying against the TLS clip art thingamajig.

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

Think for me. At least 50% of lawyers make the median salary or higher. People say bimodal means small percentage 130-160k and huge percentage 40-55k.

Well, no not really, because the median firm salary is 95k. Bimodal is meaningless after you have been practicing a few years.

I think the idea of the bimodal salary distribution is eluding you.

If 95k is in fact the median, then it is the middle of the set. 50% of salaries are higher, 50% are lower. This doesn't imply normal distribution, those two 50%s can be clustered far away from the median, but if the term median is in fact being used correctly, 50% are above it. If the bimodal thing is going to skew something it would be the mean.

Yup it can create a mean and median that is misleading to an extent, with the mean being severely scewed.

[InTheHouse]

Gotta love the fellas being dicks to Lord R. McDuff for no good reason. If $95k is the median, half the law firm salaries are above that mark regardless of where they are clustered.

[McAvoy]

Gotta love the fellas being dicks to Lord R. McDuff for no good reason. If $95k is the median, half the law firm salaries are above that mark regardless of where they are clustered.

You realize what percentage of graduates get a firm job, right?

[John Everyman]

People cite this bi model thing like religion. Please explain how a MEDIAN salary of X is misleading due to "but uhm bi model."

Because few people make the median dude cmon think ab it

No dude, at least 50% of people make the median or better. That's a ton of lawyers.

Bi model throws off average salaries, not median salaries.

where can I meet this bi model?

This was spectacular.

[cotiger]

While the bimodal salary distribution may be bad inasmuch as the lure of high salaries tempts people into taking on more debt, the salary situation for people on the upper end of the scale is absolutely improved from where it was before it formed.

In 1991, top earners made the equivalent of $140,000. However, only 4% of earners made that. Biglaw median starting salary back then was the equivalent of $115,000 now, and 12% of grads made that or greater. Compare that to 2011, where top earners make $160,000 and comprise 14% of graduates. This in a year with terrible numbers for biglaw.

[rad lulz]

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[Lord Randolph McDuff]

Gotta love the fellas being dicks to Lord R. McDuff for no good reason. If $95k is the median, half the law firm salaries are above that mark regardless of where they are clustered.

You realize what percentage of graduates get a firm job, right?

Yes. Irrelevant to our discussion, but yes.

Edit: speaking for Inthehouse, of course.

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

Gotta love the fellas being dicks to Lord R. McDuff for no good reason. If $95k is the median, half the law firm salaries are above that mark regardless of where they are clustered.

No fucking duh

it's that median isn't useful to predict anything because legal salaries cluster around $160k+ and $60k-

The median does not represent very many people

We all know what a median is dingus

Yes, but bimodal is cited 90% of the time on this site not for prediction of salary, but to suggest that the salary expected will be around 50k, or the bottom of the distribution.

That is potentially true for entry level hires where the median truly is 50k. But as I like to "poast" on your website, salaries go up.

[rad lulz]

.

[Tanicius]

People cite this bi model thing like religion. Please explain how a MEDIAN salary of X is misleading due to "but uhm bi model."

Because few people make the median dude cmon think ab it

No dude, at least 50% of people [who get legal jobs] make the median or better. That's a ton of lawyers [who got jobs as lawyers].

FTFY

[UnicornHunter]

But not before the roadtrip to Hayward, Wisconsin! Who's in?

You vacation in Hayward? What lake?

no lake, part of the article and running joke. I do vacation near Mercer over in Iron county though. You a wisco guy DF?

Illinoisian who vacations in Hayward every year.

Vilas county vacationer here. Good country.

[rad lulz]

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[Lord Randolph McDuff]

People cite this bi model thing like religion. Please explain how a MEDIAN salary of X is misleading due to "but uhm bi model."

Because few people make the median dude cmon think ab it

No dude, at least 50% of people [who get legal jobs] make the median or better. That's a ton of lawyers [who got jobs as lawyers].

FTFY

Yes, thanks. That is what I'm talking about.

[bugsy33]

I know the BLS predicts 19k new jobs a year, but if there really were 26k FTLT legal jobs filled last year I highly doubt that there will be 7k less jobs for 2016 grads. If the legal market continues to improve, even at 3% a year, 2016 grads should see FTLT employment closer to ~75%. 2017 Grads should be nearing 80%. Obviously the only way to keep employment semi-high will be to continue discouraging people from attending law school, which means articles like this should be buried.

[Paul Campos]

Some things to keep in mind:

(1) Neither BLS estimates nor NALP numbers ought to be taken as gospel, but there are some pretty obvious reasons to be skeptical of the NALP numbers, since they're inflated by law school funded jobs, putative solos, long term jobs that aren't really long term, such as judicial clerkships, which in some cases are precursors to long term legal jobs but in others aren't, dubious reporting practices by both graduates and schools (for different reasons both have incentives to exaggerate the desirability of outcomes), etc. In other words, there's some air to be taken out of those numbers.

(2) As for salaries, one third of people who got jobs with firms didn't report a salary, or didn't have one imputed to them by their schools. The real median firm salary is therefore going to be somewhat lower -- and only half of all grads got firm jobs.

(3) That said, I don't think the Slate article is completely off base. The hiring market for new lawyers probably will be better three years from today than it is now, although of course there are a lot of variables that aren't knowable in advance. And the author recognizes that the reason it's likely to be better is that bad publicity has forced law schools to shrink their class sizes by nearly a quarter -- it's not as if they would have done so otherwise. He also recognizes that recommending that people consider "law school" is too generic: there are plenty of schools that literally nobody who isn't independtly wealthy and/or already hooked up with a post-grad job ought to go to, which means those schools shouldn't exist.