The Law School Lottery Forum

[junelsat]

About 50,000 people graduate from law schools every year

How many get jobs paying $160,000 at big law firms?

Can't be more than 5000, probably closer to 3000

Anybody have a better guestimate?

[Anonymous User]

Who knows, but does 160k have to be the relevant figure? Plenty of large markets with well-known biglaw firms pay less than 160k.

[Tiago Splitter]

Note: The graph above is based on 18,398 salaries. A few salaries above $200,000 are excluded for clarity. The left-hand peaks of the graph reflect salaries of $40,000 to $65,000, which collectively accounted for about 48% of reported salaries. The right-hand peak shows that salaries of $160,000 accounted for about 18% of reported salaries. However, more complete salary coverage for jobs at large law firms heightens this peak and diminishes the left-hand peaks — and shows that the unadjusted mean overstates the average starting salary by about 9%. Nonetheless, as both the arithmetic mean and the adjusted mean show, relatively few salaries are close to either mean figure. For purposes of this graph, all reported salaries were rounded to the nearest $5,000.

18% * 18398 = 3311 making 160K.

This graph includes less than half of the salaries of 2010 graduates, but the consensus seems to be that the higher salaries are disproportionately represented.

[Anonymous User]

This long weekend is definitely driving up the number of trollish posts around here...

Because I can't help myself, though, I will say:

A) If law school is a "lottery", it's a strange one, both because the odds of success vary based on the school you go to, and because one's own skill can influence the outcome.

B) It's been said a million times, but, law school isn't biglaw or bust. There are plenty of secondary market firms outside the vault 100 that pay in the 95-120 range. In fact, a few that I've looked at actually have pay scales that nearly catch up to biglaw after 4-5 years (not Wachtell/Boies, but still, COL considered not bad at all).

When you say law school is a lottery, you really have to take into account the fact that, of those 50,000 grads, maybe 20,000 are at schools with a very small likelihood of getting anyone employed in big/mid law, and there is another group of maybe 2 or 3 thousand students from schools that get between 40% and maybe 85% (HYS) employed in biglaw, with another substantial chunk of their grads going to regional firms.

[beach_terror]

Attending a school that at least appears on the NLJ250 top 50 schools for biglaw placement and not being a total buffoon give you a more accurate representation of %s, especially considering TLS is a pretty selective sample of people who work their asses off and all that jazz.

Law school is also not a lottery in terms of percentile placement. Sure, maybe you can be +/- .1-.2 on your GPA, but it's not as crazy as people perceive it to be.

[ITE8NY]

B) It's been said a million times, but, law school isn't biglaw or bust. There are plenty of secondary market firms outside the vault 100 that pay in the 95-120 range.

Wow. And you say that WITH THE GRAPH POSTED ABOVE YOUR POST. Denial is astonishingly powerful.

[NYC Law]

B) It's been said a million times, but, law school isn't biglaw or bust. There are plenty of secondary market firms outside the vault 100 that pay in the 95-120 range.

Wow. And you say that WITH THE GRAPH POSTED ABOVE YOUR POST. Denial is astonishingly powerful.

If you integrate from 95k to 120k it's a substantial amount.

[vanwinkle]

About 50,000 people graduate from law schools every year

How many get jobs paying $160,000 at big law firms?

Can't be more than 5000, probably closer to 3000

Anybody have a better guestimate?

Trolling doesn't need to be anon.