I'm Not Passionate About Billing Hours

Of all the misconceptions about lawyers, the average salary is probably the biggest. For example, most business students think all law students make $3200 / week interning and all lawyers start at $160,000 / year plus bonus. I’ve had people ask me if I was prepared for the pay cut associated with entering the working world from the business side and I always try to tell them, the reality for Baylor students is something along the lines of this chart.

Compare that with this sadly female-unfavorable list and MBAs in most cases are better off.

And for those that like to dream big, billable hours kind of cap your potential. For example, to be a top 15 corporate lawyer in 2001, you needed to earn a mere $3.5M (and go to a top school).* I don’t know what the numbers are for 2007, but we'll assume they had a 10% annual growth rate and made $6.2M. Even then, the cutoff is a mere 1.3% of the $475M it took to make it onto the top 15 list of their hedge-funder clients.

I’m not saying I want to be in hedge funds and I’m not saying I need to make an annual salary of $400M. (it would be convenient). I’m just saying the odds of being wealthy and substance abuse-free are in the business world.

*In the same year, thanks to CivPro and the evils of tobacco, three Baylor lawyers by the names of John Eddie Williams, Walter Umphrey, and Harold Nix gave BLS students a glimpse of hope and a new school, earning a combined $38.7M.