<p>We all know that there is a perception in society that lawyers are rich. While not always the case, there are certainly many lawyers who are rich, especially among those who graduated from a top law school. </p>
<p>It seems like, to me, that women (and men, too) in their late 20s seem to be particularly attracted to people of the opposite sex who make a large amount of money. </p>
<p>My question is, then, how does being a big-shot lawyer who graduated from a top law school impact the amount of attention that one gets from the opposite sex? </p>
<p>(An answer in the positive could be another reason for me to want to attend law school; what a noble personal statement I shall have! )</p>
<p>well, if you go to work at a typical large firm, expect to work so many hours that you will have little time to be meeting people of the opposite sex other than those you work with who will be used to being around people who think that they are big shots for attending a big name law school and aren’t very impressed by it.</p>
<p>i don’t have much evidence to back this up, but apparently if a guy mentions “I’m a law student” at an undergrad bar in the town I’m living in, it’s quite an effective pickup line. </p>
<p>it doesn’t seem to work very well for women looking for men, though.</p>
<p>For what it may be worth, my experience is that it has a big impact on your Romantic Market Value. </p>
<p>In my younger days, things seemed a little unfair because a woman can usually get a lot of male attention if she puts on a miniskirt and shows off her legs. “What can a guy do?” I wondered. Later I discovered that a law degree has a similar effect.</p>
<p>Nah. What you do is you chat it up, politely defer any questions about what you do for a living. When you sense that she’s a little bit interested, you signal your friend across the bar to call you. As you leave the room – “Sorry, I have to take this – watch my stuff?” – one of the things you leave is your school ID badge, which hopefully lists your affiliation.</p>
<p>Yes, Stacy, but consider the town. It’s a college town. A nice college town, but a college town. Try that line in New York or DC–where there’s lots of competition from people out there making $ or doing really impressive things in government…and…it doesn’t work as well.</p>
<p>I don’t know about DC, but it’s true that NYC has a lot of men in law, finance, medicine, and other professional fields. However, there are a lot more single women in their 20s and 30s who are looking for boyfriends or husbands. Also, a lot of the men are gay or already married. The upshot is that in New York City, if you are a single straight male law student or attorney there will be a lot of women who are interested in you.</p>
<p>I agree it was a nice generalization - it’s (generally speaking) correct. </p>
<p>Reminds me of a chat I had with an attractive female friend who was complaining about her difficulty in meeting men. I said something like “Come on, a girl at attractive as you must get approached at least once a day.”</p>
<p>She replied “Yes, but I don’t want to date a waiter.”</p>
<p>There are some things in life that are so obvious, you don’t need a scientific study to know them. And one of those things is that – generally speaking – women put significant value on money in choosing a mate.</p>
<p>The Freakonomics passage on Internet dating is instructive here. True, it’s not a study in itself, but it references one.</p>
<p>Bottom line: what people say they want is not often what they actually want.</p>
<p>The study examined people’s profiles for their own stated preferences and then used actual contact attempts to analyze their actual preferences.</p>
<p>For example, people who claimed to be interested in dating any race actually sent e-mails vastly preferentially to their own race, etc.</p>
<p>There is a vast difference between a woman actively seeking out a romantic partner who is broke versus actively seeking someone who makes a lot of money. The generalization is degrading.</p>
<p>My point is simply that most women aren’t seeking out the wealthiest guy they can find out there – if that was true, finding a boyfriend/husband in a place like NYC would be as simple as going fishing in a bowl full of guppies. Generally, an educated, professional woman is going to seek out someone who is similarly educated and who has similar career goals and interests. You can’t leap to the conclusion that just because a woman seeks a man with a background similar to hers, that she is seeking those men solely because they make a certain income every year. </p>
<p>Yes, there are gold diggers out there, and you are all welcome to them (and I fear that is what you will find if you think that becoming a lawyer will be your golden ticket to a status where you can attract women), but I think that most professional women (teachers, speech pathologists, lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc.) don’t much need to dig for gold to the exclusion of everything else.</p>
<p>It seems to me you are attacking a straw man here. The claim you were responding to is that “women like men who make money.” The claim was not that women seek the wealthiest guy they can find.</p>
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<p>And what about a woman who is a waitress? All things being equal, is she more interested in meeting a policeman or a waiter?</p>
<p>The implication was that women seek the wealthiest guy they can find. In fact, the OP stated that women are attracted to me who make a large amount of money. However, I will agree with all of you that women do tend to like men who either do have the potential to be able to support at least themselves someday. Must a woman find a destitute man to prove that she is not after a man for his money?</p>
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<p>I’m not quite sure what that means. Did I ever state or imply that doctors should only seek out relationships with doctors and waitresses only with waiters? Just to play the game for a moment here as I wait on my flight, waiters at top restaurants can make very nice money. Policemen can also make very nice money. What does that have to do with anything? I’ve merely stated that people tend to seek out relationships with people who are similarly educated or who have similar interests. I’m fairly certain that not every waiter will have lots in common with other waitstaff merely because they share the same profession. </p>
<p>If one educated, intelligent person seeks out a similarly educated, intelligent person, there is a good probability that they may be similarly situated in terms of career possibilities. Hence, just because a woman with a degree from Harvard chooses to become a social worker, making a respectable, though small, income, and she meets a man who graduated from Penn who is an investment banker at Goldman Sachs does not automatically mean that she is after him only for his money. Perhaps they have a lot in common. Perhaps he dreams of throwing away his career on Wall Street to write books. Maybe she hopes to go back to school and eventually start up a non-profit agency benefitting poor children. Does it matter?</p>
<p>Fortunately, I can end my participation in this discussion here, as my flight is now boarding.</p>
<p>Sally, you are missing the point. A man’s amount of money correlates extremely well with their prospects.</p>
<p>A woman’s looks correlates extremely well with their prospects. Trying make excuses on why humans are vile, base creatures is pointless. It is what it is.</p>
<p>I didn’t see any such implication. There is a difference between saying that women care a lot about money and saying that women care only about money. It would appear that you do not grasp this distinction.</p>
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<p>No, you seemed to be arguing that women’s apparent attraction to men with money can be explained by the principle of like seeking like.</p>
<p>My example shows that your explanation is wrong. Because even women who don’t make a lot of money and whose jobs don’t carry much status are more attracted – all things being equal – to men who have these things.</p>
<p>Flipping the sexes illustrates my point even better: A handsome (straight) man is usually more attracted to beautiful women than ugly women. But an ugly (straight) man is also usually more attracted to a beautiful women than an ugly woman.</p>
<p>Just to change the subject a little bit…does being a CPA have any male attractiveness to it as well? I know a CPA isn’t as “sexy” as a lawyer or a doctor, but they do make decent money.</p>