$200,000 Salary for New Lawyers
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- čas přidán 17. 06. 2021
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Reminds me of the story of the plumber who fixes a toilet at the lawyer's home, then charges him $250 for an hour's worth of work. The lawyer pays it begrudgingly and says "I'm a lawyer and I don't even make that much." To which the plumber answers "I didn't make that much when I was a lawyer either."
@@jobob47 Or an electrician. Doesn't matter if there's a recession, people need their appliances fixed. Heck, from what I heard there was MORE work for plumbers and electricians during the recession.
@@jobob47 not me, literal shit work. And you only make close to that if you own the business and doesn’t include materials, travel to and from site, overhead costs like equipment, insurance, and so on.
I always cringe at the costs from home maintenance professionals, but understand it. And because of it I try to do as much myself as possible. In this Information Age there’s a lot that can be learned and done yourself if the tome and effort is worth the savings.
@@thomashajicek2747 I'm friends with my old driving instructor who makes £38 per hour for lessons; definitely the way to go imo, especially here in rural Scotland where there's competition of about two other guys lol
@@jobob47
" bmw mechanic.
I am told that you need a degree in mechanical engineering for that these days. Which is not sane as they don't use that year spent on differential equations.
Couldn't pay me enough to have me spend all day in the same car as new drivers.
I remember a quote - but can't remember the attribution: "Practicing law is like winning a pie eating contest - but the award is more pie."
Andrew Yang, I believe
*reward...
If you live Outside of NY you will have cheap living Costa but you'll still make the 200k or 300k
@@Mika-85 Good luck, there's no reasonable commute to NYC where cost of living isn't also very high. The population of NYC during the evening is 8 million, the population of NYC during the day, is 18 million.
In the time I spent calculating this rate vs minimum wage and getting mad, Jeff Bezos made $456,621 and didn't pay tax on it.
God bless America 😅
Exactly and Amazon and other "trickle down" is trying to get the National Labor Board FALSELY "unconstitutional."
Minimum wage is there for people with no education, no talent, no experience. Crying about a lawyer getting paid is crazy.
@@tehClewYour bootlicking ass couldn't exist without the billions of people doing those jobs though, so be appreciative
@@tehClewso basically you're saying teenagers. Except thousands of grown ass people with good work ethic and experience still get paid minimum wage.
Minimum wage isn't "there" for anything. It's a bare minimum that greedy people are forced to pay their employees. It's not "designed" to show people's worth - that's just something shitty people like you associate with it
People in NYC work 60-80 weeks for minimum wage all the time. So, yes, 200-300k is a shitton of money.
Yeah, he's talking about it like being a lawyer ISN'T a good deal.
@@agxrythow is he talking about it like that?
I find it wild that this is the status quo in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth.
I work 37 hours a week, mostly from home, have no specialty education, and I still make more than most Americans. AND I have the usual benefits on top of that, as well as more PTO.
I'm not trying to brag, I just find the disparity crazy.
You don’t need to go to law school to work minimum wage.
"... and I'm sure we'll see many of these people, in court!"
I was thinking "and they are going to spend a lot of time, in court" but yours works just as well.
The whole point of corporate law is to avoid court. So maybe not.
@@Barracius OVERRULED: His is wittier.
actually, you'll see a tiny portion of them in court lol. less than half of biglaw associates are litigators, and only a small share of those litigators will ever do anything that requires entering a courtroom... except maybe taking the oath for bar admission.
Yes, fun police, corporate law has a lot of its lawyers not in litigation but they still have full litigation departments. Heck, right now the second news post on Millbank Tweed's site is about a verdict obtained in court, not much further down is news about an addition to their litigation department.
Many =/= most.
And we'll at least see several of them, in court!
Hard work, long hours, NYC expenses, and law school debt to pay. Still a damn good salary, but not as amazing as it seems at first glance.
Rent control might help if you're lucky, but that is not a comfortable salary in NYC unless you really enjoy communal living and lots of interesting roommates
I worked at a 4 star restaurant in NYC. 60 hour weeks, NYC expenses and Culinary school debt to pay (not as cheap as you might think). The pay? $10/hr.
Anyone saying that this is not an amazing salary has no perspective.
@@tiskahar9738 how did you live off 10/hr in NY? I'd struggle to pay for most towns in Oregon on that wage.
It is amazing to make enough to pay all your bills, live a comfortable lifestyle, and save for the future. Anyone making 200k anywhere in this country will have zero problems doing any of the above. It is, absolutely, as amazing as it seems.
Im not claiming i know much about NY style of living and obviously this is probably? before tax... you still take home lets say 50% of earnings after tax... and that is still ~100k/year or bit more then 8k/month... if you cant live on that budget as a ~20 years old something freshmen just out of school.... then i dont know... or well... maybe i do! dont try to rent penthouse in manhattan.
God, I love how much "Cravath" and "Milbank Tweed" sound like pretentious, fancy law firm names that you'd only hear in a movie.
That's probably because movies choose names for fictitious law firms that emulate the names of real law firms.
In the small town where I grew up, there was a personal injury law firm called Hurt & Profitt, I kid you not. Everyone used to joke that their slogan was "You get hurt, we get profit!"
Also, the dental surgeon who pulled my wisdom teeth was named Dr. Pinch. Now that I think about it, do all small towns have hilariously-named small businesses, or was my small town special?
They aren’t “giving” you $200k, you have to EARN it by being the low man/woman on the totem pole at a massive firm that will do it’s best to put your nose to the grindstone. To those willing to take that on, I wish you the best luck.
But a 5th year gets 100k more and isn't a grunt anymore. That's respectable. Also you have to work your butt off pretty much anywhere with a decent salary. Not sure why lawyer would be different
Depends on what you call "decent".
I'll take making enough to live a good life in one of the top rated cities in the world, doing 40h-ish hours on my own schedule in a dream job over that grind any day.
@@ViolosD2I if everyone could get a dream job easily, it wouldn't be a dream job. Practicality must be applied.
@@brycedaugherty9211 That's not what I said.
But if they have to pay people such sums to do it, chances are it's not one.
We have quarter million dollar Fire Captains but that is 60 base plus overtime. They have to work all summer to get that, no days off, can’t have a cold beer.
60 hours would be a dream for all the NYC lawyers I know. The reality is that they probably all work closer to 90 hours.
60 BILLABLE HOURS. Actual hours worked will be higher.
I'd take that amount of pay for working 120 hours and getting paid for 20. Welcome to being an educator.
@@bearswithglasses Teachers don't work 120 hours a week.
@@ghillies4life you forgot all the stuff they got to work on after school hours
@@supe4701 No, teachers don't work the equivalent of five 24 hour days.
Becoming a lawyer to get rich is like becoming an actor to get rich. Most of us don't make anywhere near that amount. Entry level salaries outside the big firms (at least in Chicago) hover around $60,000 a year in the private sector.
Dang that sucks. They should've become a doctor then
Thats still pretty decent. No where near 200k though. Especially if you live in Chicago
Highly dependant on location. Where I live it's closer to 90k, but point taken.
And no one here is posting actual bad wages.
It’ll also vary on firm size, practice areas, etc. I’ve seen as low as $30,000 (not a typo) to join a solo and up to $100,000 for a 20+ attorney PI firm. After a year or two there’s usually a decent raise, but fresh out of law school at not-BigLaw is tough to crack six figures.
That law firm be like
Trade offer: You get 200k, I get your soul
I work 60 hours a week most weeks doing physical labour, I'd gladly take like 6x the pay for a desk job lol.
I work 70 hours a week and this would be 56 times what I make... wtf
@@loganfrancel9275 minimum wage here is higher, and I get paid above minimum wage
I just graduated from law school and got word of my raise, before I even started working
You're in NY ?
Cool beans! Good for you.
I got fired before starting
@@fsuberca 😂😂 wtf did you do ?
Pay off your debt if you are lucky enough to be able to.
Government forgiveness on loans that have it take 25 years.
Because they really like to cosign and then wait until the interest is piled on, before they pay. If they pay. Remember, even when they are required to pay because of defrauded students, they still fight it in court and take forever, etc.
Don't trust them, and you'll be okay.
In a few years I’ll be working 80 hours a week (only not doing more because of legal restrictions) and making about 59k… residency is a crock.
I am convinced that residency hours are hazing. Especially from a group that knows the importance of sleep.
See you in residency 😂
@@jhulten They are. Residency hours are insane because the person who invented the residency system was a cocaine fiend of a doctor who regularly worked 80+ hours a week because of the cocaine effects. He dropped dead before the age of 50 from a heart attack.
No worries, it's not like you'd have any time left over to spend the money anyways, so it's all the same.
@@Carahan He died at 69 but yes he was a coke and morphine addict
Lawyer "god i'm working such long hours 60 hours a week is killing me"
Constructions workers "I only have to work 60 hours this week, does that mean I'm getting saturday off?"
I don't know anyone in biglaw only working 60 hours a week. that's a fairly light week for me and I am not very busy compared to my colleagues in other departments.
I think 70-80 is more typical. but at severely busy times, (e.g. around a closing) it could easily be 110 or 120. and sudden all-nighters for an overnight deadline created without warning happen all the time. and people are constantly on call and expected to be responsive to email - 2 hours before business hours, 7 hours after business hours, whatever. it's a culture of 24/7 accessibility to partners who are offering 24/7 accessibility to clients.
so the hours per week don't really tell the story about why this life is stressful and exhausting.
I've been blessed to be insulated from a lot of tjis because of my niche practice area. but I see the toll it takes on my colleagues. not sure i would be able to last 5 years in their shoes.
Lol, I remember my first part-time job
I look back fondly on my steel construction days
Oh no, they are going to have to live in New York and that's expensive?!? Good thing no waiters or retail workers ever have to live in New York.
Seriously. I get so sick of hearing upper middle-class people pretend they're normal and that every single person they meet each day makes as much as or more than they do. Yes, some of your neighbors might be rich, but the average person isn't rich. There are way more middle-class and working-class people than there are rich people. Like way way way way way more.
Too bad there isn't some kind of big island near New York where people can go to get a lower cost of living.
@hoi-polloi1863 if you mean Long Island, its not cheaper and there's a LOT of issues with living there. My dad lives there currently, and he's working on moving out of NY all together.
Still worth it! I've worked blue-collar, physically-intensive jobs for 60 hour weeks for $40k
Remember this is the top 0.1%.
At least we still have our health! Oh wait...
Unionised workfore: 👀
As a NY lawyer for the past 6 years now who is drowning in law school debt because I only make a third of that “entry level” salary, I am legitimately outraged.
Sounds like time to see if a firm will offer you that.
Well, keep in mind that he’s talking about the big law firms here. Those guys pay big bucks to get first dibs on the best of the best “entry level” lawyers- graduates from places like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. They don’t hire just anyone for those salaries
@@Smokey63 Or in other words: @Aceofaces0007, have you considered being a better lawyer so you can get hired by better law firms?
@@Smokey63 exactly. kind of how amazon and google will pay new grads really well + bonus + benefits for the top of the top
@@Smokey63 Funny thing is that you could go to the best schools and still be just as uninformed about how to actually practice law. As LegalEagle mentioned in past videos about law school, you don’t actually learn how to practice law in law school. It’s all theory. Simply going to Harvard or Yale does not make someone the “best” entry level attorney when they’re just as inexperienced as any other graduate.
He just talked me into and out of becoming a lawyer in seconds.
Honestly, I was expecting the "catch" to be "but they have on average $1M student debt".
I wouldn't be surprised if some of them do have that massively high amount of student debt to get a law degree and pass the BAR for new york . Though the normal thing for the USA is around 50k to 100k USD in student loan debt before counting in compound interest. With compound interest it goes up to around 200k to 300k so you are looking at the citizens entire life time to pay off the loan. They also have no way to get rid of it either they can declare bankruptcy which will sell everything they own and empty all their bank accounts and still if it isn't enough the debt will still be there as it is an undischarable debt. On avg 80% of the USA who go to college takes out student loans to go to college the other 20% can afford it out of pocket or stop when their bank account is to low to pay for another semester of school.
The USA has a citizen debt problem. the thing of 1 million in student debt per person might actually be a thing if they are going for their Ph.D The thing with Ph.Ds is yes they get paid more but the jobs they will be offered are less than a masters degree would get so dual masters degrees might be more time and money to get but will be be better for them to get to be able to get a job.
I chose the wrong profession.. I say, as if I could ever manage a 60 hour work week
I did 70+ during my postdoc with starting a company at the same time. Its tough, but if you love the subject and are working for yourself (not the case here), I'd say it is a lot better than 40hr/week job you hate.
often 70-80 hours even.
@@logirex 😲
Lol i work in an un air-conditioned factory and do 65 hour weeks
For 200k? Id feel like that would motivate you
Aren't you gonna see me in court? :(
Probably not, because those entry level hours are spent doing research and administrative paperwork in a quiet back room.
@@extantsanity yeah.
Heard in the word-processing department at Sullivan, Cromwell:
"So the doctor asks if I'm sexually active.
I tell him: 'Not as much as I'd like. But obviously, a lot more than the associates.'"
Teacher here, fundamental part of society. I would like a quarter of what that lawyer is having.
Believe nobody around here wants to hear that. You have to buy school supplies out of pocket? Well they have to buy last years mercedes so have some sympathy!
Those are most of the arguments im seeing. Adults being asked to do a students work(researching case law and precedent) and complaining about being underpayed and over work.
Must be some paper cut theyve given themselves.
Thanks for all you do, no matter what level you teach i know you corral monsters all day. Monsters most often made by people like these; those affected by some early to mid stage of affluenza. Or whatever other excuse careless or disinterested parents use for their childrens school behavior.
@@pudgeboyardee32 heh, no monsters in my classroom, just kids who could use a lot more time and all the patience in the world before they have to be adults. Working AC and a full supply closet would be nice too.
@@Ansible1000 ive taught and i stand by my monster statement lol not their fault usually but some still seemed to have 3 heads or breathed fire. I taught machining so yes, supplies, supplies, supplies, and stacked nearly to my eyes please and thank you. And i wont say anything about the need for ac in shops. AC speaks for itself this time of year.
Next time im teaching and theres a strike i think i might bring the window units to the picket line to make management live that,"we're all in this together" line they love so much.
@@pudgeboyardee32 heh, title 1 schools don’t often get machine shops, which is a shame as practical skills are so good for students to learn.
Also, in my state Teachers are forbidden to strike or unionize by law. It goes back to wanting to avoid giving recently-freed citizens the power to collectively bargain. But now we’re not allowed to teach that.
@@Ansible1000 oof. Just all ooofs. And yeah, ive had kids that other teachers swore up and down couldnt do math. Until i bothered to teach them a form of practical geometry. Suddenly the could feel numbers and their scale instead of just seeing them on a page as static things. They had form and substance and even if it was just in their head they could manipulate those forms and the numbers that defined them. Division is simple to teach with a knife in hand, you know?
"Work 60 hours a week". As a teacher "What have I done to myself".
We're "not in it for the money", right? ¬¬
My reaction, too. See comment above. No wonder we lose half of new teachers.
@@Safinitzine ha, ha, ha. Be like freedom writers and work 3 jobs to take your students on a trip.
@@marywhalen364 Pretty much. I have to buy my pens, the spare paper in case they forget their books and lunches for the poorest students when we do anything outside of school. But I live in London, not NYC so I guess I'm lucky, right ^^'
**** yes this sums it up 100%.
i know people who work 60 hour weeks and would kill for half that money even if living in new york lol
And did they do 5 years of law school?
I’m pretty sure teachers work more than 60 hours a lot of them have a post graduate qualification.
Tell them to go to law school. This is a free country, nobody is stopping them🤣
@@sep.s yes, I would like a follow up to this, why is teaching lawyers worth less then half (if generous, more realistically 1/4) of their pay
@@if7723These lawyers are going to be the best grads from the most ivy of schools. So probably not a fair comparison
Also they will have to start 6 figures in debt…
so they would be able to pay it off in 7-8 years? granted people have to actually use the money to get by but it doesn't mean they can't save up and pay their debt off bit by bit.
I had my GI Bill to pay for it.
I'd love to get your take on the Menendez brothers and the chances of them getting a retrial!
THIS
I thought that case was years old
Which brings up that benchmark case of Passion v. Profit, where everyone weighs in on whether the client is pursuing a legal career out of an honest desire to do good in the legal system, an ideology that is often dismissed as naive or incredulous, or they're pursuing it for the salary attached to said career regardless of the ethical or potentially legal ramifications that pursuit implies.
In school there was a guy I hated cuz he was such an asshole. Final year he says he wants to be a doctor. He admitted the only reason he wants it is for the money. He would have made a better lawyer than doctor. He's studying to become a surgeon now. He's going to make a terrible doctor.
Problem is, Profit wins EVERY TIME! In the grim darkness of the present...
@@thetruegoldenknight only under capitalism
@@limerence8365 maybe or maybe he will be a brilliant electrician for the brain as a neurosurgeon. Honestly the only Dr I care about liking is my PCP, nurse and pharmacy tech. Everyone else i simply care if they are good.
For most of them it’s the later. Idk many lawyers who are very happy people, regardless of what they make. They all seem pretty miserable.
Yes, NYC is expensive, but not so expensive that 200k is not an incredibly nice pay. The median individual income in 2019 for *manhattan* (which is richer than the other boroughs) is only 51k. So saying "but NYC is expensive" is kind of a weird angle.
Yes, lawyers work hard, 60 hours a week is a lot, but plenty of people work just as much for way less pay--my mother was a nurse and worked plenty of overtime and never brought in that kind of money. So saying "but they work hard" is also kind of a weird angle.
200k is a nice pay, full stop.
edit: I live in the bay area and work in tech, and I will never not get annoyed at ppl here trying to do the same thing with tech salaries. Some people just have no idea how good they have it compared to the actual "typical" person even within their own rich city.
Thank you. I regularly put in the same 60 to 90 hours in a machine shop with no ac or heat. My hands bleed most days and my car is junk. But these people, theyre the real victims. Living in, arguably, the planets captial and starting near the top of the food chain is somehow a burden.
The older i get the more my position against forced labor camps for the wealthy weakens. They desperately need a reality check and none of them are gonna give it to themselves. We need a program that gives people like that some perspective. Because the golden flecked tears have got to stop before the whole planet goes full robespierre on privileged whiners
Yeah I kinda grimaced when he kept downplaying how good that pay is
Damn you guys gotta move to a social democracy where you're being exploited less
58k and below in NYC is considered low income, i.e. poverty - just because the median is 51k doesn't mean it's good
@@katiephillips9969 this is funging two different statistical measures. 58k is not poverty, it's 80% of HUD's finding of area median income based on household size (e.g. low income, which is not great, but not poverty, and the study area is not the same as "manhattan"). median individual income is also just all individual income and the median of that, without accounting for families or household size. a two income-family earning 51k would be well above the HUD limits for a two person household. they're not directly comparable, or else you're concluding that the vast majority of manhattanites is low-income, which is statistically not possible.
It pays to research your career BEFORE going into college. Entry level attorney's are currently averaging about $60K a year, about 12% to 14% more than my bachelor techie degree got me when I graduated (adjusted for inflation), and I got OT.
So the unspoken part of this short is that LegalEagle is speaking exclusively to Tier 1 Graduates 🎓, the top 14 Law Schools in the United States. You will not get a position at a high-paying firm if your graduate from a Tier 2 or 3 school. However, if you keep your undergraduate grades in check 3.85+ GPA, and score 165ish + on your LSAT. You’ll have a good shot at a Tier 1. After that - finish in the top 20% or so of your graduating law class, and you’ll have no trouble becoming gainfully employed. Just don’t let the stress get to you on the way there…
I’ll take 60 hours a week contributing with my mind, rather than thrashing my body in this warehouse thank you very much.
Billing can mean a lot of things. Like recording the amount of time spent working on a matter and/or charging the client the actual amount of time recorded and/or ultimately getting paid by the client for the dollars stated in the bill. Those three things are never always the same thing. If your target hours are tied to your collections, good luck on seeing those 200K.
@@valerierodger7700 if you need to travel on client business, it’s easy to bill hours because travel time counts. Even if you’re doing nothing more than just sitting in a business class seat and sipping Dom Perignon.
Feels bad when they came out with that new study about how 50 hours a week is going to give you some serious health damage.
50 hours a week is reasonable, that's around an 8-hour day. Unless you're charging insanely highly rates, working part-time isn't going to keep the lights on and food on the table.
@@matthewkoch6937 Punch 8 hours times 5 days into a calculator real quick and see what it says.
@@matthewkoch6937 the whole point of these studies are to show why it's completely unreasonable. When you need to keep food on the table in trade with yours and others health that's not reasonable.
It’s not “working” 50 hours, its “billing” 50. It usually takes at least 80 to bill 50.
@@matthewkoch6937 I've never seen someone fail so spectacularly in so many different areas of knowledge and reasoning in just two sentences. At this point, I'm amazed there are no spelling errors in that garbage you wrote.
Isn’t there diminishing return on productivity after 50 hrs a week.
The currently accepted range is between 40-50hrs before productivity starts decreasing (not just diminishing returns, but rather outright reversal). Though there's some new evidence which suggests that most people are really only productive for half of that (20-25hrs per week).
To give people how busy they are, remember, he's so busy he didn't even get to finish the video before posting it.
Objection! You cut the end of the short before it ended.
Don't forget most them will still have student loan debt to pay off as well. It's a great paycheck on paper but there's always fine print.
And Very Expensive to live in NY. Prices are ridiculous for shitty places.
@@stephlrideout Ya, the value of different degrees varies wildly, which is crazy that at the same university, all the degrees cost the same, whether they'll enable you to get a higher paying job or not. Also, the people that get hired at these firms are generally the best of the best. This seems pretty in line with what top technology and top finance firms pay for those with graduate degrees in those respective fields, and actually perhaps a bit lower.
@@AndrewHosford yes thank you, obviously, my point still stands
@@RabbitsInBlack That's how supply and demand works. New York is a desirable place to live, and the supply of housing is lower than the demand for housing, thus prices are very high.
The average debt after law school is $150,000
You can probably pay it off in less than 3 years if you "survive" on 100k per year
Resident Doctors (the equivalent of associates) earn around 50-60k a year and depending on the specialty can work 80-100hours a week . And that’s also in New York
You just described the schedule and situation of every New York City public school teacher.
Sounds like the lawyers will be living just fine.
Chefs pulling 80 hours for 60k lmao
Oh economic disparity, you bastard, you.
Yes because culinary school school costs just as much as law school and chefs require the same certification to work in their field as lawyers.
@@ripem1417 I went to culinary school to be able to create cuisine that inspires shows like food wars and earns the restaurant a cult following, not for the purpose of paying off school loans. How much school costs is an entirely separate issue here.
Culinary school costs the same as your general bachelors degree in regards to cost per semester, yet you only get an associates at the end of your program in the USA.
The issue I was lamenting is the fact that we work ourselves to death and cant afford rent, not that the work we do cant buy us a third BMW to park in our mansion.
@@ripem1417No. Chefs probably require more certification to not poison someone over someone whose job primarily consists of looking at files looking for a small loophole to sneak out of a contract
@@notoriousgoblin83 you’re joking right?
Would like to point out you gotta go to law school and pass the bar to be lawyer. To be a chef you just gotta shop up and lead. Culinary school is not a requirement by any means, experience is much more valuable. Everyone Ive worked with who went to culinary school was pretentious and generally didnt understand how a restaurant works they just have this bs concept of the culinary arts. Unless youre an exec (i.e. a pencil pusher) its gonna be more of a manual labor job with a heavy emphasis on logistics. Oh yea, you get to cook here and there too. People really think being a chef is way more prestigious than it really is. Maybe in a city like NYC, LA or NOLA yea but most places in America you're just a fancy construction worker if that makes sense (hot, back breaking work, thin profit margins, rampant drug and alcohol abuse)
How competitive are these jobs? I assume these tend to just go to the top graduates of elite law schools.
Highly Competitive!! That’s the whole “Lawyer” personality type… you make the highest LSAT score possible to get into a top ranked school (like Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Duke etc.) and then graduate with Honors like Magna Cum Laude and Order of the Coif. Plus, you have to be able to show extracurricular involvement by being a member or holding an official position in groups like Mock Trial and Law Review. If you don’t have any of that or didn’t pass your Bar 1st time, don’t even bother applying to those big law firms.
Ivies and other top law schools generally.
@@reanami OCI recruits are usually before the bar exam, or at least where I'm from.
They are definitely Ivy only
I've worked much harder and much longer for a lot less and sometimes only to break even, this seems like a good deal so good for them.
Damn. Sometimes I forget just how much work lawyers do. Y’all really are hard workers!!
Sure, the hours are long and its knowledge work, but everyone in academia I know would kill for 100k a year, let along twice that, let alone as a starting salary :)
Often in academia you are putting similar hours in but getting absolute shit pay as a TA or something. In school you are technically always "on the clock" as there is always stuff you could be studying etc... So it feels much less rewarding with much lower pay.
A lot of academics make six figures, but that's late in career and usually only if you're very good at publishing and raking in grants.
So whats stopping you? Go to law school.
I vividly recall running up to my office in grad school (math) on Christmas Eve to get the present I had hidden for my wife and seeing the light on in the office of the one of my professors. He had an endowed chair and probably made about 200k, but damn...
@@StarburstExpress You're a part-time student employee as a TA. Once you become a professor, you start making good money. Most of my current professors make 150k+. And entry-level professors can make around 80k
All the people saying this is “worth it” have not worked for a Biglaw firm. There’s a reason attorneys have high rates of substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and suicide compared to most other professions and the general population. Those “60 hour” weeks are an average. It’s more like a handful of 50 hour weeks, followed by bursts of 80-100 hour weeks, with an unpredictable work schedule so that many of your billable hours take place outside of business hours (and no, you can’t be offline/out of office during business hours just because you know most of your work will come in after 4 pm). And you’re on call 24/7, even while on holidays, vacation, and, for at least two associates I know, literally while giving birth.
They’re only tossing this much money at associates now because burnout and turnover have skyrocketed over the past year. Lots of Biglaw firms are having trouble retaining associates and hiring replacements. The new salary scale is kind of like a shitty boyfriend buying a bunch of expensive presents for his girlfriend because she told him she’s dumping him.
Biglaw frequently makes me miss my retail job.
Lots of others have back breaking, degrading jobs working 60-100 hour weeks for less than a 3rd of $200,000.
I'm a pre-med on the clock for 75 to 99 hours a week. Working as a Nursing Assistant (cleaning poop, pee blood etc) making $58,512 per year.
I'm one of the lucky ones in this field getting paid this well and that chose to do the job to get the experience and clinical hours instead of needing it to feed my family.
Working as a chef in London 10 years ago 60 to 80 hour weeks standard, £17,000 annually
I just love when lawyers, actors or brokers justify six or even seven digit salaries with basically 'lots of stress'
Completely spitting on people who have just as much stress but instead of a comfortable pillow of money, they have to live paycheck to paycheck.
And yes, many of them aren't just lazy or didn't try hard enough but were dealt a really awful hand in their life.
@@boooster101 and I love when people think anyone has to "justify" their salary.
associates are paid 200K-400K or so per year because they generate 1M-3M of revenue per year,.and because they need to be replaced frequently. the only people who get to decide what your time is "worth" are you, and the person purchasing your time.
if my bosses wasn't getting a lot more out of me than the few hundred K they're paying me, I would be on the job market, or at this moment, I'd be asleep, rather than in a cab home from a 14+ hour workday. but my salary isn't justified by the workday. it's justified because it was offered and accepted, and both parties are happy with the arrangement. I'd " deserve" the same amount if I were unhappy, or if I were happier, or if I was a more productive employee, or a less productive employee but above the relevant profitability threshold. which is to say, no one deserves anything. the economy isn't a series of moral judgments. it's nothing more or less than purchasing power being exercised in what parties see as their best interests.
I don't care if Chris Hemsworth has a harder job than me. I know for a fact he produces more value for the people who hire him than I do for the people who hired me. that's all the justification anyone needs.
@@jedinxf7 but you realize that there is often a circular logic?
Example:
Developers of gaming studio gearbox complained that they are underpaid and overworked (arguably they are 'creating' the value), meanwhile the CEO was accused of taking a secret 12m$ bonus.
Situations like these make a mockery of the generated revenue argument because of the distortion and artificially marked up prices.
Example;
The best known plumbing company in Town A always justifies their prices with their quality and services. Their Ceo takes 500k$ in revenue.
Then it turns out that they just pay minimum wage but also hired undocumented workers.
So did the CEO generate that revenue? Is his salary justified?
And no, the free market doesn't always regulate itself!
And for a second you had me thinking that I was going to be a lawyer
Cries in resident physician
Hey, that sounds pretty good. I might just change my whole life plans based on a 49 second video.
Idk if he added this, but It is Highly Competitive!! You make the highest LSAT score possible to get into a top ranked school (like Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Duke etc.) and then graduate with Honors like Magna Cum Laude, Order of the Coif, etc. PLUS, you have to be able to show extracurricular involvement by being a member or holding an official position in groups like Mock Trial and Law Review. If you don’t have any of that or didn’t pass your Bar 1st time, don’t even bother applying to those big law firms. Oh, and all this will prob take about 3-4 hrs depending on if you have your undergrad finished/have a an excellent application prepared, so if you start now, the entry level lawyer salary might even be more than $200K by 2025! 😬
I mean you would have to be in the top 10% of a top 5 school.
Before folks get the wrong idea, outside NYC, DC, and part of LA, no starting associate lawyer makes anything close to those amounts. Also note that firms hire associates out of school, often paying salaries which seem larger than reasonable given the lack of experience, but the majority of those new hires are going to on the street in three years or less. Only the strongest and most productive make it to partner unless daddy owns the firm.
This whole thing is giving me very Suits feels haha! That part of Suits, I really enjoyed - seeing them work day and night, how they pride themselves on only hiring from Harvard - and ofc Harvey being tired of the exact same identical candidates all showing up to the interviews, all privileged and pretty. It's a pretty good show of how the system works. If you have the right contacts, the rights people in your family, you basically don't have to do much to land a solid gig at anything... like even in my country, like HS students trying to get part-time jobs, unless you know someone who has a higher position etc at the place you're applying, no one will even bother looking at your application. My brother just finished a bachelor in marketing and fincance, and applied for a summer job before he starts his master's, and he got the job - but the one position got split into two... because the boss of the company also applied.. so instead of picking one, they split the one position into two, so they both only work 50%, because who wants to say no to the boss' son...
I've seen many lawyers at the bug firms in DC chewed up and spit out for much less. Now they're contract attorneys buried in doc review in a windowless room for 12 hours a day.
Sorry for reviving a 2 year old comment, but this isn't true. For example, Austin, Dallas, and Houston, Texas have biglaw firms that pay this amount. Lets not forget Chicago.
This amount of money makes sense and probably should have been a starting salary sooner. They have to work long hours in a very expensive city. And their degrees were very expensive
By that logic, all the sports figures should be making next to nothing. Which, for the record, I agree with completely.
Both my parents are lawyers in NYC always told me that going to these big firms right out of law school is like selling your soul to the devil. They will work you like a dog and 1 out of 10 will be rewarded with becoming a partner.
I don't see any problem with giving new lawyers a higher paycheck... The problem is that it's JUST lawyers and not all throughout the economy.
Pretty big difference in giving a few of the very best law school grads a raise after they’re hard work and a fry cook that might not even have a HS diploma.
@@Mb-wb1or So... what, you want McDonalds employees to get $4 an hour?
Only a VERY FEW percentage of lawyers make this, only if you went to a PRESTIGOUS law school and want to work corporate law. The rest of the lawyers make 60-80k a year. Stop letting videos like this fool you.
You act like there is a magic paycheck fairy that pays different professions lol no one "gives" anyone anything
200K/3000 hours is still $66/hr. That’s insane money for just coming out of school
At least 7 years of school, keep in mind.
@@spacetoast7783 Law School is only 2-3 years. Yes, they did undergrad before that, but so did millions of other people who will never make $200,000 per year in their entire lives.
@@SRosenberg203 If money is the only factor, CS, SE, CE, Csec, and some financ-related degrees will get you there with less schooling and less hours.
@@spacetoast7783 I also did an undergrad (4years) and am working towards my cpa for accounting which is 3 years of school. I’m expected to make 65K-70K/year coming out of it. Mind you my cost of living is less than New York, but not 1/4 of the amount.
@@spacetoast7783 Yes, that's true. If I wanted to be a worthless leech on society who does nothing but skim money off of the accounts of people who actually work for a living, I could have gone into the finance industry and worked on Wall Street.
Remember, we're talking about entry level salary. I've never heard of an engineer, computer or otherwise, making $200,000 at the very start of their career. When they have an experience under their belt, that wouldn't be so surprising, but entry level? I don't think so.
"These might sound high, but remember, this might be a white collar job, but it's hard work, and long hours"
*Laughs, then sobs in Journalist*
“This isn’t elementary school, this is high pressure, long hours, I need a grown man”
$200,000 for a 60 hour week? Ever hear of farmers, construction workers, loggers, etc?
Man, look at this guy. Do you see a single speck of dust? No, just like he hasn't seen a single day of manual labour...
Does a 2400 min billable requirement really correlate to only 60 hours per week? I am starting my first year associate position in a few months and thought my 1850 billable requirement would equate to about 60 per week.
As they say, "work smarter, not harder." He seems to be assuming 20% of your work day is not billable (2400 billable from 3000 total) whereas just off the top of my head you're closer to assuming 40% non billable. Making your hours billable, ethically, is an art you haven't mastered yet.
You also forgot the "doing reprehensible socially-destructive things to protect and enrich the wealth of truly reprehensible people" part of the job description.
I'd be cool with it for 200k lol
What people are failing to understand is that it isn’t just about having a law degree and being willing to work 60 hrs a week. The people getting these jobs are SMART- we’re talking graduates from Harvard , Princeton, Yale and the likes. If you don’t go to one of the top 5 law schools, you’re not getting into a top 5 firm. It’s very select people making that kind of money right out of the gate
wow, now we all feel better!
Yeah, I worked 60 hours a week for years to pay for my addiction to food and shelter. So hard work.
I say with that amount of pay and that amount of hours. That's worth it!!
That works out to $66 an hour.... I say that's completely not worth it if you have to work 60 hours a week. Work/life balance is worth more (for most people anyway).
Thanks for putting this in perspective.
The fact that most people have to work way more than 40 hours a week just to get a livable salary is absolutely absurd! We work to live not live to work!
Like if most knowledge professions aren't pulling 60 hours work weeks, and still getting paid garbage.
If you're working 60 hours a week, you're doing it wrong. I'm a programmer, which is definitely a "knowledge profession" and I work far less than that.
@@misterkite go talk to a severely underpaid school teacher before you sat dumb things
@@ChrisB-pw5sy they shouldn't be working 60 hour weeks either
Sigh...why did I decide to be in social work. Poor life choices 😩. We have long hours, vicarious trauma, and nothing but a positive feeling to show for it.
Speaking as someone who experienced trauma directly, did the work to heal, and now is about to pay that help forward to others as a therapist, our profession surely has done more good work than an army of high-priced, grasping lawyers. Pay does not equate to usefulness in this world, Jessie. Just ask teachers and priests.
@@matthewkoch6937 You took my statement with the emoji very seriously. I was joking. I am very aware, was very aware when I made the decisions in my career and education, that there were other careers that would be more financially lucrative.
and then there's also this whole thing with selling your soul to Al Pacino
Medical doctors: "um, yeah, lightweights"
considering the long work hours you should probably just live in a bedsit. Go home to sleep and eat, enjoy the money a bit later when you decide to go part time or to another firm.
I know some (young) lawyers rent out something cheap like that and then go to their parents for the weekends.
@@stevenroshni1228 That's the way to go.
You can probably save up some serious money and destroy the student debt that way.
And after serving your time in a big law firm you should be pretty competitive anywhere else.
@@kevina.2269 And without the exhaustion and lack of social life of 60+ hour weeks.
@@Carahan You'll have to make friends at work and being a busy lawyer is the life these people chose and I hope they would enjoy it. It is indeed a sacrifice. But if you keep your costs low in 6 years you could have $1million ;) but I agree with you, it's not the life i want.
One of the best paying jobs around here is a 55 hour a week factory job with mandatory overtime. It is making card board at $21 an hour, or about $60k a year.
Hey LegalEagle!
i really don’t want the person representing me in court to be over worked and tired
And this is why poor people cannot afford attorneys.
these attorneys making 200k are representing corporations, not poor people and families
Right, but if you're up against a corporation, how do you think your attorney compares (most likely) with the corporation's? Best in mind that even people who entered law school wanting to help people generally leave in debt and therefore have to make some choices about where to work.
@@IRNoahBody I was a clerk at my uncles firm while studying. I remember going home and coming back the next day only to see he never left and was still grinding.
A poor person would never solicit the services at any of these law firms. This is what you call “big law” and they’re basically exclusively representing corporations or big name individual clients.
@@bobbyfeet2240they’re corporate attorneys versus other corporations Buddy, please use your brain. Many lawyers make 60-120k , these are big corporate attorneys
wonder how much of a raise the paralegals can expect...
lmao
Lol
As an actual paralegal the “base” salary for a paralegal/clerk/legal assistant at most firms is not even half of this, and the hours are probably even crazier than the lawyers’. (I work for the city, less money, but our workload is not insane unless it’s a rare expedited case (or something in the press that we need to “take care” of quickly. I can work 40 hours a week and still be home to put my daughter to bed at night (I wouldn’t trade my time with her for $200k).
@@joermnyc if you know a paralegal working lawyer hours you know a paralegal. being taken advantage of. but I am skeptical.
If paralegal want to get paid like a lawyer, become a lawyer.
Pay is about more than working hours.
Bout tree fiddy
After living expenses and paying off student debt , they should still be left with enough to get the good ramen.
60 hours a week as a lawyer is VERY DIFFERENT to my 60 hours a week as a commercial mechanical tech, and I don’t get no $200,000 a year, even though without me most of those lawyer would be ruining their $2,000 suits.
Lawyers make way too damned much money honestly.
60 hours a week you say? *laughs in game developer*
Surely you mean cry?
Lol I work 72 hours a week. When can I expect my $145,000 a year raise?
When you move to NYC, are a lawyer, and become an associate at a top firm.
@@seigeengine Woooosh
@@robertshadix7948 How did I know you'd be a loser who can't take a joke?
@@seigeengine Personal experience, I guess
Dude. Just become an electrician.
20 hours with chat gpt summarizing legal documents
Meh. I study physics, and 60-70 hours at 100k-150k or less is the norm for most of my professors. As an undergraduate, I can work up to 60 hours during exam weeks and I don't make anything...
Where do you go where professors are making less than $100k? Are they like assistant professors? That's low even for low COL areas.
@@nautical1078 I was exaggerating. The average pay of profs in my school is about 100-150k.
Let me reverse that question: where are you a student that they're making that much? It's not unheard of for people who bring in a lot of grant money and are later in their careers to make that much, but as an assistant/associate professor of physics, I was making half that, and that was typical.
@@bobbyfeet2240 McGill. I should have specified that this is Canadian $.
If I worked 60 hours a week I could expect to earn, oh, nearly 1/6 of that. Wish I was smart enough to be a lawyer.
Anyone can be a lawyer. It takes a lot of work studying. U can do it. Just put 12 hours of studying a day for months. Then you will be ready for the LSAT. That's what this guy did, he made a vid about it
I think with most jobs it's just keep doing it and you'll learn it eventually. You end up memorizing all the information and learning the skills with repetition you just have to stick with it long enough which will differ with each person.
With the NYC minimum wage, working 60 hours a week... you would make roughly 54k without the need to pay back student loans among other expenses related to the process of becoming a lawyer. It seems like a lot at face value but it isn't significantly more after factoring different things in.
In Canada, the biggest (Bay Street) firms have first year Associate targets of about 1800 billable hours. Starting pay is typically 120k CAD. 2400 hours is A LOT (33% more), but at 200k USD they are getting paid basically double their Canadian counterparts
Laughs in 72 hour automotive work week
Working 60 hours a week is horrible. Been there, done that.
its good that lawyers work long weeks so they dont have time for gaming. they are very noobs at gaming so its good they dont much free time to be my noob team mates in gaming and ruin all weekend
Also with very tough placement! Gotta be from one of the better law schools.
I used to work 60+ hours a week for 50k a year... I'm in the wrong profession lol
my uncle, a plumber making the same amount by owning a snake and clearing toilets
Nah. If I was gonna be a lawyer, I'd rather open my own small office in some podunk little town writing wills, closing houses, and getting Joe Blow out of traffic tickets...
I would do the same. I am a hypnotherapist, and while the big city clients can make you rich, I'd much rather spend my years in a home office, helping college kids and grad students find their true calling, smokers to quit, and actors to deal better with performance anxiety. It's emotionally far more rewarding.
I worked in an office like that. It's a quieter life, but Municipal court does wear on you over time. It's a bit of a grind.
I had a roommate once who just did divorces. Worked about 20 hours per week as far as I could tell. It seemed very laid back and easy. Of course, he'd been practicing for a long time so, presumably, he had all of his debt paid off by then.
@@joecope9935 I used to work for a divorce attorney. It definitely wasn't easy. It was pure hell.
@@joecope9935 Yes! That's the way to do it! :-)
Sad thing about the divorce rate, though :-(
60hrs a week?? I remember my first part time job....
::laughs in paramedic::
Omg it’s been 2 years but can you tell more? What were the hours like?
60 hours a week is insane, that's beyond the point of diminishing returns. Plenty of good studies showing working that long just leads to less work done per hour not more productivity O_o
“Do about 60 hours a week”
Epic Game developers almost cranking metaphorical 90’s 😐(it was so bad that some had over an 80 hour work week)
I did the math. A regular job that works 60 hours a week, with time and a half after 40 hours, you're looking at just under $55/hr. $55/hr & 60hr/week is $200,200/year.
Most jobs don’t pay time and a half if you are regularly working 60 hrs per week. At least that’s my experience.
Straight overtime sucks
Not that amazing tbh. Not bad, but not amazing.
@@10bd1 Try salary... You never get a 20 hour week to offset the 60 hour week.
A) Your math is off. If $55 is the time and a half wage, then the regular wage would be $36.67 which would only equal $133,473.60 per year. B) What the heck kind of "regular" job are you talking about? The average hourly wage in the USA is $11.29. Even in NYC it's only $20.24 per hour. C) You really think there's a multitude of jobs out there that would rather pay someone time and a half for 20 hours a week every week of the year for years on end when they could just hire a part-time worker and only pay the regular wage?
I'm assuming you're still quite young and don't yet know how the working world works. If you're not young, you're very ignorant of how the rest of the world outside of your bubble works.
@@jhulten this is in line with my point…
I'd rather do 60 hours as an attorney than the 60 I'm doing as a construction worker now
Then go to law school. This is a free country. Change your life. It's never too late
@@mareezy I am enrolling into a BA program this fall. This country is not free & that's why I'm becoming an attorney
@@fernandoarista3302 cool. You need to sharpen your reading comprehension skills if you didn't understand what I meant by free🤣
@@mareezy one count of being a dick.
@@mareezy You're not free to do whatever you want.
You're free to do whatever you can afford.
Pretty sure Fernando understood what you said but you failed to understand him.
The catch is that you have to be a lawyer
Q: What do you call 10,000 lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
I guess I will have to see myself in court this time. :'(
60 hour work weeks? Sounds like a dream compared to many tech jobs....
Most tech jobs have very reasonable work life balance.
At least anecdotally.
Many of the big tech companies actually have pretty good work/life balance, for engineers at least. Companies try to keep it that way because it’s actually a pretty big selling point and helps retain the best talent.
Only tier 1 graduates make this, most lawyers make way less than tech jobs. I know many lawyer earning 60-70k after 7 years of college and 200k debt
Here in Norway it is forbidden by law to have a set work schedule of more than 40 hours a week (less for certain occupations), and you are not allowed to work more overtime than a) 10 hours in a 7 days, b) 25 hours in four consecutive weeks, or c) 200 hours in 52 weeks.
So if any company tried to coerce you into working 60 hour weeks here, you'd most certainly be seeing them in court.
While here in Chile first year associates are paid 15k per year