To add to this: The law market is a quickly-narrowing pyramid for the top jobs. If you're a top 10% (ish) grad from a top 20 school, you can get a high-paying

To add to this: The law market is a quickly-narrowing pyramid for the top jobs. If you're a top 10% (ish) grad from a top 20 school, you can get a high-paying job with one of the big firms. For 10 or so years you work super long hours for maybe 120-150k. Then after about a decade, maybe 5% of those get offered partner. Everyone else gets sent out; best case in that situation is getting an in-house counsel job at about half the pay you had before. Or you could be a public defender, for probably less money than a teacher makes. Source: my dad works at a top 25 law school and my brother works at a firm in DC (there's probably some attenuation here)