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You see this same distribution for business school graduates, and I suspect it has a similar cause. You can either go to law school (or business school) immedi

by exelius 12y ago

You see this same distribution for business school graduates, and I suspect it has a similar cause. You can either go to law school (or business school) immediately after finishing your bachelor's degree, or you can go back to school after 5 or so years in the work force. If you have no professional full-time experience, nobody is going to pay you more than $60k or $70k because it will take a few years for you to become a moderately productive employee. You're really no more useful than someone right out of undergrad. But if you have an advanced degree and a few years of proven job experience, you can hit the ground running and as such, employers often pay $150k+. I bet if you were able to plot salaries and full-time experience on a graph, this would become obvious. That's my hypothesis, anyway.

rm999 12y ago
The difference is almost all big law firms pay first year associates the same amount (within the same city, at least). For the last few years this has been ~160K in NYC/DC/SF. Smaller firms typically pay much, much less. Getting into big law has little to do with prior experience. It's much more correlated with law school, but I know people who went to second rate schools who got offers to prestigious big law firms. I believe about 25% of employed new graduates go into big law.
kelukelugames 12y ago
This is not the case. The places being 160k are the white shoe firms--the Googles and Facebooks of the legal world. And they hire fresh law school grads with just a few summers' worth of clerkships and internships.
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jimmydddd 12y ago
Law school grad here. I agree with the other replies to @exelius. For law, prior work experience does not help, and can even hurt. Those $160k jobs go, for the most part, to students from the top law schools, or top students from the second tier schools. For example, I went to a second-tier law school, and when those $160k firms came to campus for job interviews, they were only interested in interviewing those in the top 5% of the class.
ghaff 12y ago
The situation with MBAs and law degrees is quite a bit different. With law, it's not so much about the experience but about the fact that there are too many lawyers chasing too few jobs with the result that hitting it big with a prestigious big-city law firm pays the big bucks and everything else not so much (assuming you can even find a job as a lawyer). And those big-city law firm jobs go disproportionately to top graduates at a handful of top schools and/or to those with connections. The market for MBAs is a lot more diffuse and work experience is much more sought after by the top MBA programs than is the case with law.
- storgendibal 12y ago
  Agree in general. However, with MBA programs skewing younger every year, you find people with 2-3 years work experience getting offers from management consulting firms and investment banks at the same salary levels as MBA grads with 5-6 years pre-MBA experience. I think it diverges later on though, especially in consulting. The person with 5-6 years pre-MBA experience tends to climb the rung faster because they have more credibility with clients.
  - ghaff 12y ago
    Fair enough. The big management consulting firms and investment banks are sort of the MBA equivalent of the big-city law firm. (Big salaries, long hours, prior experience not especially required--with the caveat you stated.) In general though, the tail of MBA jobs outside of those areas, especially for people who already have some good work experience, is probably a lot healthier than for law these days.
    - exelius 12y ago
      Absolutely; consulting is probably only 25% of the MBA job pool and while they are usually the highest-paid, many people choose to take a slightly lower salary in exchange for not a job that has less travel. Pretty much all of those jobs require long hours as well, but at least you can go home at the end of the night.

by exelius 12y ago

rm999 12y ago

The difference is almost all big law firms pay first year associates the same amount (within the same city, at least). For the last few years this has been ~160K in NYC/DC/SF. Smaller firms typically pay much, much less. Getting into big law has little to do with prior experience. It's much more correlated with law school, but I know people who went to second rate schools who got offers to prestigious big law firms. I believe about 25% of employed new graduates go into big law.

kelukelugames 12y ago

This is not the case. The places being 160k are the white shoe firms--the Googles and Facebooks of the legal world. And they hire fresh law school grads with just a few summers' worth of clerkships and internships.

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jimmydddd 12y ago

Law school grad here. I agree with the other replies to @exelius. For law, prior work experience does not help, and can even hurt. Those $160k jobs go, for the most part, to students from the top law schools, or top students from the second tier schools. For example, I went to a second-tier law school, and when those $160k firms came to campus for job interviews, they were only interested in interviewing those in the top 5% of the class.

ghaff 12y ago

The situation with MBAs and law degrees is quite a bit different. With law, it's not so much about the experience but about the fact that there are too many lawyers chasing too few jobs with the result that hitting it big with a prestigious big-city law firm pays the big bucks and everything else not so much (assuming you can even find a job as a lawyer). And those big-city law firm jobs go disproportionately to top graduates at a handful of top schools and/or to those with connections. The market for MBAs is a lot more diffuse and work experience is much more sought after by the top MBA programs than is the case with law.

storgendibal 12y ago
Agree in general. However, with MBA programs skewing younger every year, you find people with 2-3 years work experience getting offers from management consulting firms and investment banks at the same salary levels as MBA grads with 5-6 years pre-MBA experience. I think it diverges later on though, especially in consulting. The person with 5-6 years pre-MBA experience tends to climb the rung faster because they have more credibility with clients.
- ghaff 12y ago
  Fair enough. The big management consulting firms and investment banks are sort of the MBA equivalent of the big-city law firm. (Big salaries, long hours, prior experience not especially required--with the caveat you stated.) In general though, the tail of MBA jobs outside of those areas, especially for people who already have some good work experience, is probably a lot healthier than for law these days.
  - exelius 12y ago
    Absolutely; consulting is probably only 25% of the MBA job pool and while they are usually the highest-paid, many people choose to take a slightly lower salary in exchange for not a job that has less travel. Pretty much all of those jobs require long hours as well, but at least you can go home at the end of the night.