Avoiding the Debt Trap, Starting Salaries for Law Grads Not What You’ve Been Led to Believe
While some Texas firms are raising starting salaries to match the Coasts, the reality of starting out is much less lucrative than many law students have been led to believe. For the jobless JDs in a tough legal market, finding a job is hard enough. As noted in National Law Journal article About That Huge Salary: It’s a Long Shot, the picture isn’t as rosy in all aspects of the legal market.
…the eye-popping salaries are the reality for a small fraction of law school graduates, and all those stories of big money may be creating unrealistic hopes for the vast majority of law school students. Contributing to the situation is the effort by law schools to portray their employment numbers as robustly as possible to boost their ranking scores. The upshot means dashed expectations for lots of graduates, many of whom are saddled with high debt as they struggle to start their careers. “They do not have an accurate perception of the job market,” said Emily Spieler, dean of Northeastern University School of Law. “They have very restricted views.”
The Houston Chronicle’s Mary Flood takes a local view on the Legal Trade Blog in Lawyers who make the smaller bucks and in the Chronicle article Salary reality: Many lawyers don’t earn big bucks.
So what’s a JD candidate to do? Here’s one option -
Evening Law School, One Way to Avoid the Debt Trap
Money was the main factor in going the evening route. I spent a year trying to save up some money to do the traditional full-time route and had to concede that what I managed to save up wouldn’t even make a dent. In-state tuition at public schools has skyrocketed in the last decade. It’s cheaper than a private school, but it’s no longer the bargain it once was.
Evening Law Schools have had a long and varied history in the pantheon of legal education. Some notable institutions such as Georgetown started out exclusively offering evening classes.
Prior to the current rigorous accreditation regime enforced by the ABA however, many law schools operated in a laissez-faire environment and night schools in particular developed a reputation for being more interested in collecting tuition than teaching the law. The reputation of evening law schools has improved with an emphasis being placed on the equivalence of the education. At Houston, for instance, evening students have the same professors, the same opportunities for extracurricular activities and academic honors and the same degree at the end. Working and going to law school at the same time can be tough, but it may be worth the sacrifice to avoid the debt trap.
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[…] I’ve blogged about this issue before in Avoiding the Debt Trap, Starting Salaries for Law Grads Not What You’ve Been Led to Believe. I think the obvious question from most non-lawyers would be this - so you’re not making $160,000 a year in your first year out of school? and this is shocking to you? this is somehow unfair? Only in bizarro-world law-school-land does not making six figures your first year at a new job qualify as newsworthy. So why does this make the front page of the Wall Street Journal? […]