Top Law Schools

Stolen from ATL:

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).

280 graduates/school over a 5 year period isn't as comprehensive as many of us would prefer, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. There's a list of the 98 schools and the median salary included in the article.

sup uva

Go Georgetown. I thought we'd be way down with just how many grads the school churns out...

Yes, yes I did just celebrate the thought of having a salary of 117,000 instead of the median of 160,000 we were all sold on. Oh how times have changed.

Is it just me or does it seem like they're creating a false dichotomy for median salaries? Think about how many biglaw associates have been pushed out/laid off/left of their own volition within 5 years of graduating.
Student A goes to Michigan gets big law
1 year out 160k
2 years out 170k
3 years out 185k
4 years out moves to in house making 100k
5 years out 103k

So just because the payscale data doesn't match up doesn't necessarily mean the schools are lying.

Sentry wrote:Is it just me or does it seem like they're creating a false dichotomy for median salaries? Think about how many biglaw associates have been pushed out/laid off/left of their own volition within 5 years of graduating.
Student A goes to Michigan gets big law
1 year out 160k
2 years out 170k
3 years out 185k
4 years out moves to in house making 100k
5 years out 103k

So just because the payscale data doesn't match up doesn't necessarily mean the schools are lying.

Eh, they took a snapshot picture of lawyers and would've gotten some students in all ranges... It wasn't just at 5 years out, it was less than 5 years. So it included 2 years, 3 years, and so forth of different people. Median years out was 2.

And what the schools put out is misleading and this is more informative to after graduation prospects. The schools likely have more detailed information and choose not to use it.

Unitas wrote:

Sentry wrote:Is it just me or does it seem like they're creating a false dichotomy for median salaries? Think about how many biglaw associates have been pushed out/laid off/left of their own volition within 5 years of graduating.
Student A goes to Michigan gets big law
1 year out 160k
2 years out 170k
3 years out 185k
4 years out moves to in house making 100k
5 years out 103k

So just because the payscale data doesn't match up doesn't necessarily mean the schools are lying.

Eh, they took a snapshot picture of lawyers and would've gotten some students in all ranges... It wasn't just at 5 years out, it was less than 5 years. So it included 2 years, 3 years, and so forth of different people. Median years out was 2.

And what the schools put out is misleading and this is more informative to after graduation prospects. The schools likely have more detailed information and choose not to use it.

2 years out would put you at the class of 08 which got laid off by the thousands in biglaw.

The article assumes that the stats on Payscale are a statistically representative sample. I'd be extremely surprised if they are. I'd never heard of Payscale or ever visited it until reading this article.

I'm not going to do the math, but if you take the number of graduates from what essentially appears to be T1 and T2 schools over the last 5 years, I'd be surprised if 28,000 is enough to matter. I'd also be surprised if those 28,000 were accurate.

Still, "transparency" is always welcome, I guess.

wiseowl wrote:The article assumes that the stats on Payscale are a statistically representative sample.

which is totally wrong

Julio_El_Chavo wrote:

wiseowl wrote:The article assumes that the stats on Payscale are a statistically representative sample.

which is totally wrong

Agreed. I think it's a bit amusing that the author of the blogpost chides law schools for giving out misleading information while cheerfully doing so himself.

This is awesome. But how the hell did Columbia and UVA do better than Harvard and Stanford with respect to starting median salaries?

XxSpyKEx wrote:This is awesome. But how the hell did Columbia and UVA do better than Harvard and Stanford with respect to starting median salaries?

I don't think they controlled for clerkships.

wiseowl wrote:The article assumes that the stats on Payscale are a statistically representative sample. I'd be extremely surprised if they are. I'd never heard of Payscale or ever visited it until reading this article.

I'm not going to do the math, but if you take the number of graduates from what essentially appears to be T1 and T2 schools over the last 5 years, I'd be surprised if 28,000 is enough to matter. I'd also be surprised if those 28,000 were accurate.

Still, "transparency" is always welcome, I guess.

I can't speak for other schools, but the data for my T1 seems much more realistic than the self-reported numbers, therefore I am obliged to give some (albeit not much) legitimacy to the study.

mistergoft wrote:

wiseowl wrote:The article assumes that the stats on Payscale are a statistically representative sample. I'd be extremely surprised if they are. I'd never heard of Payscale or ever visited it until reading this article.

I'm not going to do the math, but if you take the number of graduates from what essentially appears to be T1 and T2 schools over the last 5 years, I'd be surprised if 28,000 is enough to matter. I'd also be surprised if those 28,000 were accurate.

Still, "transparency" is always welcome, I guess.

I can't speak for other schools, but the data for my T1 seems much more realistic than the self-reported numbers, therefore I am obliged to give some (albeit not much) legitimacy to the study.

I dont see why people are speculating on this. All the data is at their website. Here is a link to get you started: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Sch ... ary/by_Job

Notice that UChicago has a whopping 13 individuals reporting. The 160K jobs apparently dont exist AT ALL.

tkgrrett wrote:

mistergoft wrote:

wiseowl wrote:The article assumes that the stats on Payscale are a statistically representative sample. I'd be extremely surprised if they are. I'd never heard of Payscale or ever visited it until reading this article.

I'm not going to do the math, but if you take the number of graduates from what essentially appears to be T1 and T2 schools over the last 5 years, I'd be surprised if 28,000 is enough to matter. I'd also be surprised if those 28,000 were accurate.

Still, "transparency" is always welcome, I guess.

I can't speak for other schools, but the data for my T1 seems much more realistic than the self-reported numbers, therefore I am obliged to give some (albeit not much) legitimacy to the study.

I dont see why people are speculating on this. All the data is at their website. Here is a link to get you started: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Sch ... ary/by_Job

Notice that UChicago has a whopping 13 individuals reporting. The 160K jobs apparently dont exist AT ALL.

How are you inferring this from the graph? These are medians by job type. The 13 people reporting is screwy, tho.

These are all interesting:
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Sch ... loyer_Type
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Sch ... Experience
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Sch ... ary/by_Job

Not sure exactly what to make of this, but the numbers they are citing are not telling the whole story. At firms, from UPenn, median is $160. The only way I can reconcile the Years Experience graph with the others is that there are a few people with 1-4 years experience sprinkled throughout the different types of employers, with the half or more at each type of employer making "market" or above.

Graduates 5-9 years out are making $210. The only way I can reconcile this with their number is that there is overreporting by people in the 1-4 years category that are are not making market or overreporting by those a few years out that are making market (or people that go to UPenn and miss biglaw tend to dominate 5-9 years out by doing something else).

Bottom line, these numbers do not seem representative.

tkgrrett wrote:

mistergoft wrote:

wiseowl wrote:The article assumes that the stats on Payscale are a statistically representative sample. I'd be extremely surprised if they are. I'd never heard of Payscale or ever visited it until reading this article.

I'm not going to do the math, but if you take the number of graduates from what essentially appears to be T1 and T2 schools over the last 5 years, I'd be surprised if 28,000 is enough to matter. I'd also be surprised if those 28,000 were accurate.

Still, "transparency" is always welcome, I guess.

I can't speak for other schools, but the data for my T1 seems much more realistic than the self-reported numbers, therefore I am obliged to give some (albeit not much) legitimacy to the study.

I dont see why people are speculating on this. All the data is at their website. Here is a link to get you started: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Sch ... ary/by_Job

Notice that UChicago has a whopping 13 individuals reporting. The 160K jobs apparently dont exist AT ALL.

I saw how USF was oddly high on the list, so I decided to check it out. The law school doesn't even come up on a search - apparently there's 0 individuals reporting from USF law. Even Harvard law has only 240 individuals reporting. Cooley has 228 reporting. Tough to figure how they got to 28000 data points over 98 law schools. Scam?