Tuesday, July 17, 2007 9:32 AM
Over the last few years, I have talked on occasion to students considering law school. When asked about my 'lessons learned' from my own years at law school, I always start with a simple statement: keep a close watch on the debt you are incurring to pay for school and try to keep the total as low as possible. Why? Because the higher it is, the longer you will be making monthly payments and/or the larger those payments will be. And, while at age 23 or 24, it is often difficult to foresee just how much impact a big monthly school debt payment will have on your life and goals (e.g., buying a house, etc.), rest assured it will have a bigger impact than you can imagine.
That is, unless you are able to command a very large salary right out of the gate. But, here is the thing...the very large salaries we have all been reading about? They really are only being given to a minority of the freshly minted lawyers out there.
On this point, Leigh Jones at The National Law Journal wrote a nice piece this month on the subject of lawyer salaries, About That Huge Salary: It's a Long Shot.
The gist of the article (which is well worth the read) can be gleaned from these excerpts from the first few paragraphs:
Despite news of record-breaking employment figures for law school graduates and first-year salaries of $160,000 at many top law firms, a significant contingent of job seekers -- including those with strong credentials -- are living a much different story after graduation...
...But the eye-popping salaries are the reality for a small fraction of law school graduates, and all those stories of big money may be creating unrealistic hopes for the vast majority of law school students. Contributing to the situation is the effort by law schools to portray their employment numbers as robustly as possible to boost their ranking scores.
...The upshot means dashed expectations for lots of graduates, many of whom are saddled with high debt as they struggle to start their careers...
From my own network, I can simply say that the range of salaries being earned is quite dramatic. Ms. Jones' article attests to this:
According to the latest information from NALP, the Washington-based nonprofit group that tracks legal employment, 90.7 percent of last year's law school graduates were employed nine months after graduation, topping 90 percent for the first time since 2000. The total number of graduates for whom employment status was known equaled 40,186.
From that number 55.8 percent -- or 22,424 -- took jobs in private practice. NALP estimates that about 37 percent of graduates who go into private practice end up working for firms with 101 attorneys or more. Importantly, the vast majority of the firms paying first-year associates the much-publicized $160,000 have more than 500 attorneys.
The result is that about 80 percent of law graduates are not working in law firms with more than 101 attorneys and, consequently, are making far less than the amounts grabbing all the attention.
"I'm kind of stuck," said a 27-year-old lawyer from Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law who moved to Chicago after she graduated last year. She did not want to reveal her identity out of a concern that doing so would hinder her job search.
Currently working for an in-house department at a large insurance company in Chicago, she graduated in the top third of her class, was a member of law review and participated in the school's moot court competition. She has $70,000 in student loan debt, she said, and makes about $50,000 annually.
She sent out more than 100 résumés and letters before and after she graduated, she said: "I could get in the door; I just couldn't land the job."
She said that many of her friends from law school are working on a contract basis for law firms: "A lot of people are making $30,000."
I would ony add to this excerpt that I would bet a survey of public defenders, lawyers working for nonprofits and even those just putting out their shingle for the first time, would find a large number of lawyers not even making $30,000.
Ultimately, salary may not be some lawyers main concern. They practice in less lucrative areas out of sheer love for their work. And, certainly that is a completely credible reason for choosing a particular career path. But, no matter what path you choose, keep an eye on your debt load. Believe me, when you look back ten or twenty years from now, you will be happy you did.
Link to NLJ article: About That Huge Salary: It's a Long Shot