Is the Legal Gold Rush Over?

Starting salaries at big firms may be entering the stratosphere, but prospects aren't the same for less than top-tier graduates, the Wall Street Journal reports in a front-page story today.

Apparently, some graduates of second-tier law schools are having more trouble finding work, and are receiving salaries that don't offset their six-digit educational debt. And some say media reports of $160,000 starting salaries for first-year associates are feeding a misconception that such riches await all law school graduates. The article also raises questions about whether law schools are adequately warning graduates that they may not make big money right out of school.

Does this hold true in the Washington job market?

Comments

[L.B. Jeffries]

Definitely agree with Kostya. Practicing law is not nearly so difficult that it will exclude large numbers of people from getting law degrees. Excess supply, shrinking demand.

Now I just need to figure out something to do with my spiffy law degree...

[Kostya]

This seems accurate, with the exception of the claim that this represents an imbalance of supply and demand. There is no reason to expect the legal profession to be a superlucrative one for all involved. The top salaries that mid range graduates of mid range schools were receiving were more likely representative of an imbalance in supply and demand.

Salaries for first year associates because stratospheric because there was an excess of demand for the supply provided, and as a result, more supply has come to market. I suspect, insofar as a true market balance for this sort of thing exists, we are closer to the proper point now than we were earlier. The legal profession is not so difficult, and lawyers are not such gifted people such that even the mediocrities need massive compensation to be enticed into the field.