Lumping your comparison to include people without high school degrees with lawyers is making a huge mistake. At a minimum the comparison should be between collage graduates and lawyers minus the opportunity cost of law school.
Consider, when comparing starting salary your accountant or whatever not only makes money in both years a lawyer is in law school they also likely have two raises before the lawyer gets his first paycheck and start paying back undergrad loans while a lawyer is still adding interest and new debt.
If your opportunity cost from loans, tuition, lost wages and delayed carrier advancement adds up to a conservative 10k/year after taxes for the rest of your life, then your 72k pre tax lawyer is actually making the equivalent of ~58k pre tax and 1/2 of starting Layers are doing worse than that.
Also factor in cost of living and rent. That ~$72k is not going to fly in SF or NY after rent if you are trying to start a family and not have 3 roommates.
I don't see how this is relevant. Of course lawyers must make more in a HCOL to make ends meet, but how is this different than any other profession? Are there significantly more lawyers in HCOL areas?
The demographic you refer to are renters because their debt to income ratio is not sufficient for a mortgage. After going to law school, having to scrape by and pay back student loan debt + HCOL rent is how you are entering your adult life with a law degree. Your entry level salary is still depressed relatively speaking to an entry level software dev in HCOL area. If your spouse is not the breadwinner you are in trouble.
I still fail to see the reasoning here. Most other young professionals are in the same boat: debt out of college, smallish starting salaries, renting, HCOL areas.
Lawyers have higher salaries than most other professions, though. They are 10% better paid than software developers. We have a huge amount of really well paid developers in SF, Seattle and NYC, and lawyers still have a higher median salary.
Thanks I see where you are coming from. All things considered you can make a great life out of a law career if you are driven and motivated, like you said the ceiling is much higher for law than general population jobs
Sure, but the job was irrelevant substitute librarian or anything other than unemployed and the opportunity cost still exists. IMO, the comparison is still quite generous as it ignores risks associated with trying to become a lawyer.
Consider, when comparing starting salary your accountant or whatever not only makes money in both years a lawyer is in law school they also likely have two raises before the lawyer gets his first paycheck and start paying back undergrad loans while a lawyer is still adding interest and new debt.
If your opportunity cost from loans, tuition, lost wages and delayed carrier advancement adds up to a conservative 10k/year after taxes for the rest of your life, then your 72k pre tax lawyer is actually making the equivalent of ~58k pre tax and 1/2 of starting Layers are doing worse than that.