Originally Posted by matclone  SL, if top dollar is your goal, and you have the talent, private is the way to go.
I'm no expert on this, so I could be wrong, but my sense is all the big dollar jobs go a very few, perhaps the top 3% of the law classes. To me, aspiring to be a big firm lawyer (with the salary thereunto pertaining, and the 80 hour work weeks) is like aspiring to be a professional athlete. You may be good, but unless you are really, really good, it's not a realistic expectation. Did you see what NY Times said starting IRS attorneys were getting? 65-70K. Doesn't sound too bad to me.
Unfortunately, many students today acquire huge debt loads that they have to deal with after school. |
Matclone, I was just providing you w/ the information on which I made my claims. As far as the top three percent thing goes, I believe that the average starting salary (private) of any of the top fifteen schools is about 135,000 dollars. So you do not need to be in the top three percent of your class to get a big dollar job, although it certainly wouldn't hurt. That said, to get into these schools you are probably going to have scored in the top five percent of for the LSAT (165 or above) if not better so maybe that is what you mean (Grades, etc. included).
I do not disagree with you about the desirability of these jobs, but like you said the debt is huge and it would be hard not to take the jobs when you have just got done paying 40,000 some odd dollars intuition plus living expenses. The 65-75K IRS jobs pay will put you in a position not to have your tuition reimbursed (most of the reimbursement programs require that you be making less than 50,000 dollars) so, as I have been saying, people face an unfortunate dilemma.