The economic statistics of the legal market described in the Wall Street Journal article "Hard Case: Job Market Wanes for U.S. Lawyers" by Amir Efrati shouldn't really come as a surprise, but it is a good reminder for law students to start their financial planning early:
Evidence of a squeezed market among the majority of private lawyers in the U.S., who work as sole practitioners or at small firms, is growing. A survey of about 650 Chicago lawyers published in the 2005 book "Urban Lawyers" found that between 1975 and 1995 the inflation-adjusted average income of the top 25% of earners, generally big-firm lawyers, grew by 22% -- while income for the other 75% actually dropped.
A BigLaw job is like a lottery - the chances are against you, so you owe it to yourself to use your critical thinking skills to evaluate the hyped-up talk about lawyers' salaries.
Read Build A Solo Practice, LLC and Blawg for more discussion of this topic.
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