Will the Shrinking Salary Shake Your Decision of Being a Lawyer?
- Jiaying Song
- Nov 1, 2014
- 2 min read
Why do pre-law students dream of getting into law school? To receive a competitive salary or to fix the ineffective legal system? Think twice before making the rash decision: going to law school. Do current law school graduates earn as much as they expect to earn? The answer is not promising. According to the article "Prevalence of the $160,000 Starting Salary for Lawyers Is Eroding" in The Wall Street Journal, “in 2014 first-year associate salaries of $160,000 accounted for 27% of the salaries reported at law firms with 700-plus lawyers. Compare that with 2009, when nearly two-thirds of first-year salaries were reported as $160,000.” Another an article, called "Amid Plummeting App Numbers, Law Schools Adapt to Economy" in the Yale Daily News, states that, "In 2012, the American Bar Association published a study showing that only 55 percent of law students found full-time jobs within nine months after they graduated in 2011." Undisputedly, the data shows us that, after the economic crisis of 2007, the shrinking job market has not completely recovered. Some people may argue that being an attorney is a stable career because people always need lawyers to fix problems, especially during a global economic crisis. Nevertheless, according to the data released from Nation Association of Law Place, the median starting salary has been declining since 2009. Law school graduates have to accept the reality of earning less than years ago. Understandably, during these economic recovery years, some companies, like startup companies, prefer to invest millions of dollars in business development rather than process lawsuits.
To balance the rate of investments and returns, current pre-law students are making "educated economic decisions.” A dilemma is that many people chose to attend law school with tons of debt and ended up quitting their law firm jobs when paying debt off because they figured out that what they really wanted was not money but a life. Don’t you think it would be smarter if he or she chose other areas at the very beginning instead of going to law school? As Robert Berring, a law professor at University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said, "Students who are unsure of their futures may be wary of the high tuition fees associated with law school". It is not late to reconsider your original intention. Get rid of dreaming of getting fat salary or being awarded a fancy status label. Be honest to yourself and make the right decision.
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