| Almost 50% of new law school graduates can't find jobs. Of course it's likely that the unemployed 50% is the bottom 50% of applicants. Look at the distribution of lawyer income. There is a large group bunched near the bottom making 40k-60k a year, and a smaller group at the top making above 160k. You need to do really well to be in the 160k group. >Relatively modest undergraduate performance can get you into a law school like Northwestern's The median LSAT score for Northwestern is 168 about that's right at the 96th percentile, so about 4% of people taking the LSAT will score a 168. Even Northwestern's bottom quartile score is just below the 90th percentile. Their median undergrad GPA is 3.75. How are those numbers relatively modest? So yes, someone who scored in the 96th percentile on the LSAT and had a 3.75 GPA in undergrad has a decent chance of spending 3 years at a top tier law school where they have a 43% chance of making over $160k a year upon graduating. Northwestern also costs about $300k to attend. >87% of the class of 2013 "found work and reported a salary" I don't thinks that's really saying all that much. It doesn't say they're working in jobs requiring a law degree. Of course 87% are working at some kind of job--they owe $300k in student loans. Another way of looking at it is--13% of graduates from a top tier law school are unemployed with $300k in debt. No one is arguing that lawyers from top tier law schools can't make a decent salary, but there are only a few thousand slots open in the top law schools each year. If you're in the top few percent of law school applicants and you think you'd enjoy practicing law, then by all means go to law school. But looking at the averages, the median salary for a software developer is about $93k, and the median salary for a lawyer is $113k (from the bureau of labor statistics). Total cost for law school is over $150k on average, and the opportunity cost for not working as a software developer for 3 years is much more than that. Add in interest for student loans (and forgone interest on potential savings) and it will take over 2 decades before the average lawyer pulls ahead of the average software developer. Add to that the fact that software developer jobs are expected to grow at a significantly higher rate than lawyers, and that lawyers constantly place near the bottom on job satisfaction surveys. By the way I, initially planned to go to law school, but every lawyer I talked to was so discouraging that they eventually talked me out of it. A few of them were very successful family friends, but they absolutely hated their jobs, and they warned me that there are much easier ways of making money. |
Say you spend $300k on law school. Over a 30 year career, you only have to make an average of $10k extra per year to break even.
The "Jobs Data" tab offers more details: "79.2% of graduates were known to be employed in long-term, full-time legal jobs", "93% graduates were employed in long-term jobs", etc.
The number of software jobs are expected to grow, but is the growth going to be in jobs you really want, or will they all be for 23-year-old coding bootcamp grads?
Again, who cares about the nationwide averages? The 50th percentile Northwestern law grad makes $160k right out of school, and is on track make several times that as a law firm partner, or somewhat less as in-house counsel. My impression is that most programmers struggle to hit $160k any time in their careers, at least outside of SFBA.
When someone describes the downsides of their job, I take it with a grain of salt. Often, it's a case of "the grass is always greener". Sometimes, members of high-status professions want to downplay their success. In any case, most of the lawyers I've talked to say they enjoy their work (though they do work much longer and less predictable hours than programmers).