Real Data = ZERO law schools with a median salary of $160k Forum

[Magnificent]

http://blogs.forbes.com/kurtbadenhausen ... ke-160000/

Payscale looked at 98 popular law schools and found roughly 28,000 recent grads in their database who reported salary information and were working in the private sector with less than five years experience (we excluded those working in the public sector). The median work experience for this group was two years with a median age of 29. Payscale did not find one school with a median salary of $160,000 and only three with salaries of more than $125,000 (see complete results below).

Columbia Law School led the way with a median salary of $157,000. The law school’s grads include Presidents, Supreme Court Justices and billionaires. Easy access to New York’s elite law firms keeps salaries high. No. 2 is University of Virginia School of Law where grads with little or no experience have a median salary of $137,000. Harvard and Stanford follow next, but only 12 schools total show a median starting salary in private sector jobs of more than $100,000.

sure there is self-selection in terms of people who turned in data to the website but even then its kinda crazy

[rundoxierun]

Actually look at the payscale site and you will see why this is stupid. Here is a sampling of the TOTAL(regardless of experience or sector) number of individuals reporting at a few of the top schools.

1) Yale- 59
2) Harvard- 246
3) Stanford- 70
4) Columbia- 32
5) Chicago- 13
6) NYU- 36
7) Michigan- couldnt find individual law school data
Virginia-13
9) UC-Berkeley- 26
10) Northwestern- 34

Useless.

[aliarrow]

Actually look at the payscale site and you will see why this is stupid. Here is a sampling of the TOTAL(regardless of experience or sector) number of individuals reporting at a few of the top schools.

1) Yale- 59
2) Harvard- 246
3) Stanford- 70
4) Columbia- 32
5) Chicago- 13
6) NYU- 36
7) Michigan- couldnt find individual law school data
Virginia-13
9) UC-Berkeley- 26
10) Northwestern- 34

Useless.

This. And how many of you are going to continue to repost the same article?

[Sentry]

It also doesn't account for people who quit/are fired from biglaw within 1-5 years. If someone leaves 160k biglaw for 95k inhouse after 2 years...

[rundoxierun]

Shocking conclusions from the data on the payscale website. Turns out that a Harvard law grad's corporate attorney median salary is 118K vs. Associate attorney at 164K vs. Associate attorney (Law firm) at 170K.

Moral of the story: always choose the associate attorney (law firm) job over the associate attorney job.

[aliarrow]

Shocking conclusions from the data on the payscale website. Turns out that a Harvard law grad's corporate attorney median salary is 118K vs. Associate attorney at 164K vs. Associate attorney (Law firm) at 170K.

Moral of the story: always choose the associate attorney (law firm) job over the associate attorney job.

You just had to make your point on the thread still being read.

[justhockey31]

I dunno about this article...GW grads make about the same amount as Catholic grads (83,700 vs 83,200)?! Does anyone else find that a bit off? How about Catholic making more than American?

ps - only really looked at DC schools

[Gecko of Doom]

.

[Borhas]

F'n UVa and old Southern money

Oh I see the sample sizes... useless indeed

[Attorney]

F'n UVa and old Southern money

UVa's home market is DC. Not very Southern. Did you really think some old Southerners in Richmond were paying all that $?

In other news, PayScale is utterly worthless and I LOL'd at opening a thread that is purportedly about "real data" and finding PayScale figures within.

[Borhas]

F'n UVa and old Southern money

UVa's home market is DC. Not very Southern. Did you really think some old Southerners in Richmond were paying all that $?

In other news, PayScale is utterly worthless and I LOL'd at opening a thread that is purportedly about "real data" and finding PayScale figures within.

ummm old Southern money reps hard core all over NoVa/DC, as well as the rest of the South. Richmond plays a role in that world, but not necessarily a big one. Those families have lived in VA for hundreds of years. The DC suburbs have rapidly developed since 50's (and Big Government) and lots of out of staters have moved in, but the direct beneficiaries of that growth have been the families that already lived there.

[Attorney]

ummm old Southern money reps hard core all over NoVa/DC, as well as the rest of the South

[delusional]

No biggie. Columbia can keep the $3,000. I'ma be above median anyway.

The worst sentence in this whole remarkably misleading article: "Turns out 99% of grads do not get jobs within nine months of graduation..." GrammarEnglish would have been useful in rendering that idea a little more coherently.

[firemed]

The only one with a sample size big enough to be useful was Harvard. So whatevs. Useless data.


We all know the market sucks. Why do people keep posting this stuff?

[Aberzombie1892]

It also doesn't account for people who quit/are fired from biglaw within 1-5 years. If someone leaves 160k biglaw for 95k inhouse after 2 years...

Not tttthhhaaattt many people lateral from big law in house. Most in house groups are looking for corporate law (business planning/M&A/tax/finance/entertainment) people to go in house, and a lot of law school graduates that go to big law are practicing in other areas (i.e. litigation).

There is a reason Milbank started that new program with Harvard. It's not because associates were being courted by all of the greatest corporations in the US. It's because if you wash out, or are fired, your options are not as glamorous as TLS.com makes them out to be (especially if you aren't a corporate law associate [business planning/M&A/tax/finance/entertainment] with 3-5 years of experience).