7 Feb, 2007
How high associate starting salaries affect law schools...
A bit of a continuation of my last post. Looks like the big firms here in Chicago are following suit with starting salary increases for their first year associates as well.
Here is a post from Balkanization talking about the effect of high associate salaries at elite firms on legal education. A couple of important points...
- "A similar table for non-elite law schools (outside the top 30 or so) would likely show that only 5% to 10% of graduates enter these [top 250 firms...ie, the high-paying firms] firms, and for many schools the percentage is much lower."
I agree with his assessment. And that goes back to the point in my last post. Your chances of finding the $100,000 salary if you don't attend an elite school is dramatically small.
He goes further to note that the high cost of most legal education:
- " forces graduates to take the corporate law firm route, . . . as a means to finance the cost of law school. . . . Many students come into law school with different aspirations, and later decide to go to law firms to pay off their hefty loans."
He also cites students at lower reputational schools as being the losers in this system:
- "Many students at non-elite law schools are not doing well. As indicated earlier, only the top 5% to 10% of graduates from non-elite schools obtain the choice corporate law jobs (with a much lower percentage at many schools). The remaining 95% of graduates will earn substantially less initially (many in the $50,000 to $70,000 range), and over their careers. These lawyers mainly serve individual clients or work in government positions. When adjusted for inflation, their pay has decreased in the last couple of decades (see Heinz, Urban Lawyers 2005), while loan payments have gone up.
I also echo the below sentiments:
- "non-elite graduates pay almost the same amount for a law degree but have significantly lower expected earnings. Law school may still be a sound investment for these graduates, but not necessarily for those who had a solid earning potential before entering law school, and not for older students."
Students who have a miniscule shot at these high salaried jobs are paying as much in tuition as those with a decent shot. But those with little hope of a big paying job may not be aware of that fact coming into law school that they are not likely to land such a job. So those two groups mentioned (older students, those with high earnings potential) should think long and hard about borrowing as much money as it takes to pay for law school in most cases because they could end up in a worse situation after law school than before.
He also mentions the scholarship disparity problem.
- "There is another nasty twist. Many of the top students at non-elite schools—the ones with a decent chance to land corporate law jobs—get substantial scholarships (which schools use to lure highly credentialed students to boost their rankings), while those lower in the class often pay full price. As a result, the students who are likely to earn far less subsidize the education of the students who will earn a great deal more."
Read the whole article though. It's a good comment on how the big law firms' hiring practices could affect you, not to mention the entire legal community.