Do 1st Year Associates REALLY make that much??? Forum

[The Valkyrie]

I don't want to get into an argument, but you're wrong. 50% of lawyers earn at least $113,000? You are obviously getting all of your information from LAW SCHOOLS. I'll just leave it at that. Jesus Christ. The level of delusion among 0Ls and law students is a huge problem.

I believe it. But:

1) Lawyers /= law students. Lawyers are the people who already got the jobs. Many lawl students today won't.

2) Many leave the law to do other stuff because they hate it / they can make more money doing something else. People who have shitty lawyer jobs that make less money tend to quit being lawyers.

3) Lawyers surveyed largely graduated in a very different economic environment.

all very true.

I'm an attorney who is working in a fucking bar to pay my goddamn light bill. no one has ever surveyed me about shit. you know why? it might be because people who administer these surveys have a vested interest in portraying law as a healthy and profitable profession.

yes, biglaw pays great money. yes, you can be financially successful as a lawyer outside of biglaw. but this myth that you can count on a six figure salary, OR ANY SALARY AT ALL, when you come out of LS has got to stop. I'm not one of those people who feels like I have to "save" people from law school. But good god, please listen to people who have actually been on the other side of law school before you run your goddamn mouth, clockwerk. fuck.

[rad lulz]

I don't want to get into an argument, but you're wrong. 50% of lawyers earn at least $113,000? You are obviously getting all of your information from LAW SCHOOLS. I'll just leave it at that. Jesus Christ. The level of delusion among 0Ls and law students is a huge problem.

I believe it. But:

1) Lawyers /= law students. Lawyers are the people who already got the jobs. Many lawl students today won't.

2) Many leave the law to do other stuff because they hate it / they can make more money doing something else. People who have shitty lawyer jobs that make less money tend to quit being lawyers.

3) Lawyers surveyed largely graduated in a very different economic environment.

all very true.

I'm an attorney who is working in a fucking bar to pay my goddamn light bill. no one has ever surveyed me about shit. you know why? it might be because people who administer these surveys have a vested interest in portraying law as a healthy and profitable profession.

yes, biglaw pays great money. yes, you can be financially successful as a lawyer outside of biglaw. but this myth that you can count on a six figure salary, OR ANY SALARY AT ALL, when you come out of LS has got to stop. I'm not one of those people who feels like I have to "save" people from law school. But good god, please listen to people who have actually been on the other side of law school before you run your goddamn mouth, clockwerk. fuck.

Feel you breh. I've seen law school profs and deans parrot out these exact stats like they're meaningful. But they aren't.

[JamMasterJ]

The percentage of attorneys who work or have ever worked in BigLaw is much larger than 5%. 25% of graduates of the class of 2009 reported salaries of $160,000. http://www.nalp.org/startingsalarydistr ... lassof2009. That figure does not take into account unemployed graduates or graduates not reporting salary information, but 5% is still too low. There are also graduates who do not start in BigLaw but later lateral into it (people clerking, people who develop an in-demand specialty, people who work for a boutique that gets acquired by a larger firm, people who start in government, people who get certain LL.M.s). This is not to say that getting a BigLaw associate position is easy, though.

The other thing to consider is that it is possible to find financial success in the law outside of BigLaw. The 2009 median income of all US lawyers was $113,000, meaning that 50% of all lawyers earned at least that much, with the 75th percentile somewhere above $166,400. http://www.bls.gov/oes/2009/may/oes231011.htm and http://volokh.com/2010/07/25/the-bimoda ... awyer-pay/. Sure, starting salaries may not always be in the six figures, but it's possible to work your way up (provided you have the intelligence and work ethic).

lolreported

[clockwerk]

I really wasn't expecting to generate such vociferous responses lol. The $113,000 figure is from the Dept. of Labor rather than the law schools.

In any event, I'm also a law school graduate who's been out in practice. I certainly know how difficult the job market is at the moment having gone through it. This is anecdotal, but my first job was one of those positions funded by a law school fellowship -- the pay was crappy but I leveraged the experience and contacts it gave me to get a much, much better job with a much better salary. It wasn't fun working crazy 70-80 hour weeks for what worked out to be less than minimum wage, but paying your dues isn't a bad thing and I did get a lot out of it.

That said, I appreciate that a lot of graduates don't ever make it into legal practice in the first place. For the poster who's working at the bar, I really hope that you get some sort of break in the job market. I remember worrying about paying rent.