It may be helpful to contextualize some of these numbers. I'm a law student at a similarly-ranked law school in a lower-COLA area. Like most of my peers I hav

It may be helpful to contextualize some of these numbers. I'm a law student at a similarly-ranked law school in a lower-COLA area. Like most of my peers I have a job lined up at a BigLaw firm in NYC which pays $215 base and about $35 in bonuses for a total of $250. This steps up in a rigid scale yearly until partnership (or you burn out and die). The older numbers are pre-covid pay bump which has reset comp, and with consulting bumping I suspect comp may rise again. It's a substantial capital outlay (even though I don't know anyone paying full sticker) but if you can stomach the work it pays for itself fairly quickly. Happy to give a more detailed breakdown of financials as I suspect there are not many lawyers on HN (I made an account to comment on this).