@Gadolhadorah
Most newly graduated Lawyers do NOT earn upwards of $150.000 right out of school. Those days ended with the economic collapse of 2007/8. Top firms may pay that to graduates of the top schools, but may newly admitted lawyers are lucky to get a job paying $80,000. Many can’t earn enough to cover their student loan payments.
There is a glut of lawyers on the market and salaries for beginning lawyers have fallen quite a bit.
My firm is in one of the highest paying cities for lawyers. I hired 3 new associates this year (not counting daughter and son in law). All three came from Ivy League law schools, but were not top 5% of their class. They are starting at $82,500 plus benefits and do not have to produce the 2-3,000 annual billable hours that Wall Street and White Shoe firms require. That said, I don’t pay $150-180K, but had more than 200 applications for the 3 positions.
What’s more these new hires know that they will never be on a partner track, only CTL family will ever be partners in my lifetime. The new hires can expect to learn a lot, get a living wage and after 3-5 years hang their own shingles or become an in house counsel for a large corporation or government agency.
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