

Distribution of Law School Graduate Starting Salaries - mshafrir
http://www.mymoneyblog.com/distribution-of-law-school-graduate-starting-salaries.html

======
prestia
Another commonly overlooked fact is that many law schools contact recent
graduates who have yet to find employment and offer them brief opportunities
to assist professors with research projects for $20/hour. Other schools offer
to subsidize internships with public defenders' offices for similar pay. These
outreach programs invariably coincide with the period when U.S. News and other
organizations start doing their surveys for yearly law school rankings.
Apparently, these programs are enough to count recent graduates as "employed"
for the sake of rankings.

Truth be told, recessions hit the legal profession early and hard. Anyone
considering going to law school and waiting out the recession should carefully
weight their options. Obtaining a law degree is an expensive and time-
consuming process that provides little guarantee that good jobs will be
available upon graduation. I graduated from a great law school in 2009 and
found good work, but I have several classmates that were not so lucky.

------
Umalu
The most interesting aspect of this is that starting salaries follow a bimodal
distribution, with one cluster around $50K and another around $165K. This is
very unusual. You would think that lawyers would follow a normal distribution,
peaking in the middle, but instead the salaries suggest that there are a bunch
of stars and a bunch of laggards, with very few falling between the two
extremes. Bottom line: law school is very risky. If you don't reach the $165K
starting peak, you fall off the cliff.

~~~
eitally
Did you read the article? The reason it's bimodal is because there are two
distinct, significant employer types that make up the endpoints: large,
prestigious firms with fixed $160k starting salaries on one end and the
government on the other end. Small firms and independent attorneys fill the
gaps in the range.

------
bhousel
related: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2140283>

tl;dr: Law schools are liars.

