"Clients Won’t Pay For What Law Schools Churn Out"

Graduate School Law School
78

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<p>One of the best posts I’ve seen in this forum. Very insightful…</p>

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<p>Just curious, are all the law firms in this study NLJ250 -type of law firms? (doing litigation, corporate law, large attorney composition, respectable salaries, etc) Or, does this study include those bunches of no-name shops doing insurance defense, personal injury, or divorce settlement? </p>

<p>If we are strictly talking about NLJ250 law firms’ median partner incomes and the figures cited above are correct, law firm partners don’t make anything close to what I had envisioned before. </p>

<p>Also, I find it ironic that this thread is arguing how BigLaw associates are being paid more than they deserve, when in reality many BigLaw associates feel underpaid. After three years of law school + six figure loans, many BigLaw associates loathe at lack of job security at BigLaw, intense workload, insane cost of living in NYC (over half of all entry-level BigLaw gigs are based in NYC), and ridiculous taxes in NYC. Not to mention, the clients that these BigLaw associates work for on daily basis get paid double to triple the amount of these lawyers. (think guys in hedge funds, I-bankers at Bulge Bracket, people from PE shops such as KKR, Blackstone, or Silverlake, and the list goes on) This leads to the perception that, while these BigLaw corporate lawyers are working on deals with these bankers and hedge funders and working just as hard, they don’t get paid anything close to those ballers in high finance and thus may lead some BigLaw associates to feel actually underpaid for their labor.</p>

<p>In summary, the fact that BigLaw has notoriously high turn-over rate just proves that many aren’t happy with their input to output ratio (utility of their paycheck compared to their supply of labor at Biglaw) at BigLaw after a couple of years into the job.</p>

<p>Lastly, if one is to question why BigLaw associates are being paid 160k to start out, people should be asking why I-banks pay 120k to fresh college graduates without work experience or graduate degree. Some employers (think Citadel, Blackstone, PIMCO) pay over 200k to start out to fresh college graduates! My college buddy who works in trading at Bulge Bracket in NYC makes 140-150k a year straight out of college.</p>