Paychecks Rose to a Median of $108K for 2007 Law Grads in Law Firms

Lawyer Pay

Paychecks Rose to a Median of $108K for 2007 Law Grads in Law Firms

Posted Jul 28, 2008, 08:03 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Median pay for 2007 law grads who went into private practice has surpassed the $100,000 mark, but salaries for their counterparts in other legal jobs still pale in comparison.

The median annual salary for new law grads in private practice was $108,500, a jump of $13,000 over 2006, according to new survey results released by NALP.

Median salaries were less than half that amount in other legal jobs, however, according to NALP, which bills itself as an association for legal career professionals. The median salary was $50,000 for new grads in government, $42,000 for those in public interest positions and $48,000 for judicial clerks.

Just 16 percent of grads had big-firm starting salaries of $160,000 while 38 percent earned $55,000 or less, according to a NALP press release. For all jobs, the median starting salary was $65,750, and salaries of $55,000 were almost as common as salaries of more than $75,000. This so-called “bimodal distribution,” also reflected in 2006 salary figures, has some law professors condemning the big-firm hiring model that created a system of have and have-not law grads.

The NALP survey of 186 ABA-accredited law schools found that nearly 92 percent of 2007 law grads for whom employment status was known were employed in February 2008, a slight increase (PDF) over the past three years. Nearly 77 percent whose employment was known had jobs that require bar passage. Another 7.7 percent had jobs for which a J.D. is preferred or required, but bar passage is not necessary.

A majority of the employed graduates—55.5 percent—landed jobs in private law firms. However, the number was lower for African-American graduates; only about 48 percent went to private law firms.

Differences were also reported for employed women. About 31 percent took judicial clerkships or jobs in the government or public interest sectors, compared to about a quarter of employed men.

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Posted by QJC - 3 months, 3 weeks, 5 days ago

Dang it! I’m back to less than mediocre. Again.
Posted by PandaLaw - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 3 hours, 45 minutes ago

Absolutely ridiculous. No law grad deserves 6 figures starting out. Yeah, I said it.
Posted by BC - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 3 hours, 34 minutes ago

Where do they come up with these numbers?! Big law pays that much, but the vast majority of the smaller firms pay less than 70, most less than 60. I need to move to a market where six figures is the norm rather than the exception!
Posted by Level 70 Prot. Warrior - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 2 hours, 19 minutes ago

These starting salary or average salary stories are practically meaningless to me. If they’d break it down by region or, if at all possible, state, then maybe I’d be interested.
Posted by Sara - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 2 hours, 7 minutes ago

Agree with PandaLaw - no one merits 6 figures starting out - you’re basically useless (even if you’re smart) with no practical skills or experience (unless you’ve been working for 15 years in another field and made the switch to be a lawyer in that same field)
Posted by AFL - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 1 hour, 26 minutes ago

To BC: AMEN!! If you find it, let me know.
Posted by associate - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 1 hour, 9 minutes ago

PadaLaw, Sara,

I agree, and if you’ll take over my student loans for me, I’ll take 60k.

What, no takers?

Then quit with your pathetic holier than thou attacks.
Posted by Bill - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 1 hour, 4 minutes ago

Even by NALP’s generous figures, only 16% of all U.S. law grads made $160k. So one can guess that the percentage of students from non-top-20 law schools who got one of these jobs is probably around 5%. And remove those who got the job because of family connections and it’s probably 3-4% of students from the “bottom 90%“ of U.S. law schools who actually get these jobs. Yet it seems to be all we ever hear about from the ABA Journal.
Posted by greg - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 14 minutes ago

I agree with Sara and PadaLaw - 160K is overpaying for someone who has limited skills out of law school. In no other industry does a new graduate receive such an exorbitant salary, and for good reason - they still have a lot of learning to do.

If you need to make that kind of money right out of law school just to pay your student loans, then you have created your own problem financially. Don’t cry about ‘holier than thou attacks’ - your pain is your own.

However, I’ve noticed an increase in layoffs among BigLaw firms, which means increased expectations for that excessive salary. Social life? Family? Ha! Work hard, and you’ll get a bigger food slot in the door, and the firm name embroidered on your cot.

And keep this in mind: in order to average 108K, there must be one attorney making around 55K for every attorney making 160K.

By posting stories on average salaries, or the huge salaries paid to a very few, the ABA Journal skews expectations, and presents an unrealistic picture of what to expect after law school for about 90% of graduates.
Posted by cecil - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 5 minutes ago

Median v Average.

Median salaries means the 108k is exactly in the middle of all the responses.

Very nearly useless to decipher anything about the information.
Posted by R - 3 months, 3 weeks, 23 hours, 52 minutes ago

This article would be more interesting if we knew what percentage of the law grads where known. To say that 92% are employed, without know how many law grads are unknown, makes the statistic worthless. If I was making 6 figures, I would probably contact the career center at the law school to brag. If I was flipping burger making minimum wage, I probably wouldn’t contact career services to say what I was making. It should be easy for these law school when they report there numbers to say how many people graduated. It would probably skew NALP numbers if they had to report that these numbers were based on a significant minority of recent graduates.
Posted by John D. - 3 months, 3 weeks, 22 hours ago

Greg, et al.,
Associate salaries are set by a market. Complaining about the way an efficient market functions is like complaining about the weather.

160K makes perfect sense for a first year law student. At my firm, make significantly more than 160K with their bonus. The idea is that you pay talented people a lot of money and develop them, so that 3-4 years later you have a very valuable resourse. Such pay compensates those people for investing their time and money getting a top notch legal education.

I am a senior associate. I get paid a far lower percentage of what I generate for our firm than a first year, yet I see absolutely no irrationality in the pay of first years, nor in my own pay. Frankly, you all sound a bit irrational and jealous.
Posted by Mike - 3 months, 3 weeks, 21 hours, 41 minutes ago

The real problem is the use of these numbers when law schools advertise to prospective students. Many students think that because the average is X then that is what they will make and not take into account the distorting effects of the 160K salaries until they look for a job. Would you prefer to know what the average income is in the US with or without Bill Gates and the other super wealthy?
Posted by Mike - 3 months, 3 weeks, 17 hours, 32 minutes ago

I don’t know how I feel about this whole debate. I do feel that these stories encourage too many people to join the legal profession and based on the rapidly escalating cost of going to law school and current credit markets I think most people are setting themselves up for disappointment (especially when no top tier schools cost the same as top tier).

That said. I choose government as my starting point, in all honesty I probably could not have landed 160k but low 100’s sure, I didn’t like what I saw of the big firm “training” and preferred hands on approaches. You work for that 160k, not in skill but in hours, ask anyone who works in the doc review temp world, you can easily make 160k there too but at what cost and without the chance for advancement.

From my own experience, taking a lower paying high experience job can really pay off in the long run. You gain value to potential employers much faster and have greater flexibility in choosing your “private sector” career path.
Posted by Michael - 3 months, 3 weeks, 14 hours, 53 minutes ago

Boo hoo - that guy earns $180K a year. I earn $40K. Waaaaah. Just do your job and stop crying about Jimbo next door getting an S-class instead of a C-class Mercedes. Just focus on helping people and the reward will come in time.
Posted by Al Tidom - 3 months, 3 weeks, 14 hours, 32 minutes ago

The market forces govern. No one is ultimately paid MORE than he is worth; even a young cocker is paid money on the expectation that it will all pay off for the firm down the road. The older ones subsidize the young cockers (who might believe they’re actually worth it) while in reality it is the young studs tht will EVENTUALLY fund the old cockers retirements. That is why they pay the big bucks now.

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