<p>I first met someone with six-figure education debt in 1989 (an MD). My own debt was much more modest - my monthly debt service was exactly what I paid for my first new-car loan.</p>
<p>But my first job out of law school in 1984 initially paid $8 per hour, the equivalent of $16.57 in 2010.</p>
<p>It wasn’t a document review job - I worked for a small litigation firm. It wasn’t even full-time at first. But the time I left a couple of years, I was making a little over $37 an hour (in today’s money), and had learned enough to start my own firm. Fast forward to the present - I’m a senior in-house attorney for a Fortune 1000 company.</p>
<p>It wasn’t fun graduating during a recession. And I remember well how depressing it was to be making so little money. It was a modest start, but it turned out to be the start to a rewarding career, both in terms of job satisfaction and remuneration.</p>
<p>I think the small firm route is actually a better one for most new law school graduates than the document review route, in terms of career development.</p>