[vonseel]

I thought a lot of the pay changes with lawyers was due to tort reform and caps on punitive damages, but I am basing that purely on vague memory.

To be fair, first year lawyers at top firms do earn comparable pay to programmers at good companies, maybe not as much as a full compensation package with equity, I’m not sure. But those lawyers who consistently rank at the top of their class and among their peers and stick it out and eventually make partner - they will make much more money than the average software engineer. See this link for some details on what top Texas firms are paying associates [0]. Partners at the big firms make a lot more than 190-300k - probably 2-3x.

The catch is that with law or investment banking you need to be at the top of your class and pedigree matters if you want to get the best jobs. With software engineering these days, a degree is becoming less and less important.

I think at the end of the day the person who enjoys being a lawyer is a very different type than the person who enjoys being a software engineer / coder, and I’d be surprised if there’s much overlap between the two. I’m sure some people can be good at both, and certainly most good developers have the brains to get through law school and pass a test, but the work is so drastically different many people just won’t be happy in the job, and, like what possibly happened to your girlfriend, they move on.

[0] https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2018/06/25/major-te...