FANTASTIC comment from a lawyer named Rita under a garbage CNBC story about lawyers. News flash: unless you go to Harvard, Yale, or Stanford or you’re in the top 10% of your class (the percentage of grads that are eligible for these jobs increases as the law school US News rank goes but, but never enough to justify the risk of taking on $100-250k+ in debt and the opportunity cost of spending three priceless years of your 20s working on something that, for many if not most, turns out to be worth less than a fart in the wind in the job market). Lemmings, why do you possibly think an actual attorney who’s actually passed the bar and actually already been through the law school process would think something like this? Comments are in brackets. In any case, here’s Rita’s comment.
RITA:
this article is so misleading [gee, almost sounds like law school marketing]. I am a lawyer and graduated at the top of my class from a second tier law school (I had to work for a living). You need to add a paragraph to this article to let the public know that only about 10 percent of all law school graduates each year [and about 70-80% who are “luck” enough to work these 70-80 hour-a-week jobs are shown the door within five years] are hired by these large firms that pay such high salaries and you need to let the public know that the REST of the lawyers graduating each year earn between 40K (as an assistant prosecutor or other public servant lawyer) and about 80K as an associate [good luck making 80k. it’s most like 30-50k, but maybe it was 80k when Rita graduated] in one of the half a million smaller and mid size law firms out there. The reality is that these 160K a year jobs with the super bonuses go to the top ten graduates of law schools like yale and Harvard [as we’ve hammered again and again on Law School Lemmings, don’t bother going to law school unless (a) you got a full ride; (b) you’re going to Harvard, Yale, OR Stanford; or (c) you have an inside connection that can guarantee you a job that will make the ROI make sense. even then, you’re spending three years that could be better spent elsewhere]. The rest of us struggle to make a living just like your next door neighbor. The reason your author NEEDS to make these corrections is because I cannot tell you the number of people I have run into over the years who simply assume that I am RICH because I am a lawyer and they assume that I can do free work for them or give them free work because I am a RICH lawyer and then these members of the general public who read such rubbish as you have written refuse to pay me for my work (and in some cases it has been a lot of HARD work for a client). [Lemmings, if you still think law school is a good idea, one of the joys of being a lawyer is the clients who rip you off.] There is no problem with reporting these outrageous salaries so long as you keep the record straight and let the general public know that such dream high paying jobs are very few and far between upon graduation [VERY few and definitely not worth risking $100-250k in life-destroying debt for the chance at a job most people hate] and if you didn't go to an Ivy league school you can pretty much forget about every breaking into that tax bracket anytime soon after graduation...............
