Actually, law students, if they choose the right area, are pretty correct in assuming that they will make some insane money. Or at least they used to be before this year's crash. Of course you need to graduate from a top law school with a perfect GPA, top marks on the bar and some solid summer internships under your belt first.
Had one of our top partners at my firm give a lunch meeting today and he talked about how they are currently re-assessing their compensation packages because with the economic downturn they've realized that they are paying 26 year old grads with no real experience far more than clients are willing to pay for them. Despite these newbies having no perceived value to the client, the firm was paying them insane salaries just to attract talent. Not having quite the profits this last year that they have had before made them realize how foolish the industry was being, and he told us to expect the trend in the industry to swing towards more reasonable compensation in the future.
It was actually incredibly refreshing to hear a top partner in the firm, who earns more in a year than anyone here will probably ever see in a decade, talk about how attorneys are wildly overpaid for their education and skills. He brought up how he was on a search committee for the president of Johns Hopkins University, and how they were going over the resumes of 150 of the greatest minds in the world, with the most amazing resumes imaginable, and the guy they selected out of that pile would be earning 60% of what the attorney who chose him made in a year.
So, yeah, I can understand expecting to make some money with a top law degree.
A masters from BSU, however, is worth about as much as a clever drawing on the back of a cocktail napkin.
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