Associate Salaries, Law Schools, Student Loans

Law Schools Where Grads' Starting Salaries Exceed Their Student Loan Debt

Did your law school or alma mater make the cut?

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money falling from sky bonus salary student loans paid offIn today’s world, the vast majority of students attending law school have been saddled with seemingly insurmountable six-figure debt loads. Many law students are under the mistaken impression that they’ll be able to pay off that debt quickly; after all, they believe their starting salaries after graduation will be in line with the once-standard starting salary of up to $160,000 at Biglaw firms across the country (depending on office location) — a salary that has risen to up to $180,000 thanks to the great salary raise of 2016. Unfortunately, these high-salary positions account for only 17 percent of entry-level jobs for recent law school graduates. Eighty-three percent of law school graduates will be left wondering how they’ll ever be able to pay down their debt in a timely fashion, if at all. What’s a prospective law student to do?

Choose the most cost-efficient law school to which you’ve been accepted, preferably one with a high salary to debt ratio, and your starting salary may well meet or exceed your student debt burden. There are several law schools that are not only highly ranked, but whose graduates are very well-compensated after graduation — in fact, they’re so well-compensated that it makes up for the high costs of their legal education.

U.S. News has put together a ranking of the 10 schools with the highest debt-salary ratios among 2014 graduates. Did your law school or alma mater make the cut?

USN Debt to Salary Ratio Chart

For this to mean anything, of course, it’s worth examining the number of graduates from these schools who were employed at firms that actually pay these high salaries.

Using the class of 2014 at UT-Austin Law as a test case, we see that 251 graduates were employed in full-time, long-term jobs where bar passage was required (discounting 23 graduates employed in school-funded positions). Of those 252 graduates, 166 are working in private law firms, and 95 percent of those who are working in such firms reported their salaries. Of those 166 graduates, 132 are working in private law firms that are large enough or prestigious enough to support having starting salaries of $160,000.

At UConn Law, on the other hand, we see that 99 graduates were employed in full-time, long-term jobs where bar passage was required. Of those 99 graduates, 57 are working in private law firms, and about 84 percent of those who are working in such firms reported their salaries. Of those 57 graduates, 15 of them are working in private law firms that are large enough or prestigious enough to support having starting salaries of $95,000.

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We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again, but before you decide to shell out tens of thousands of loan dollars to attend a law school in the hope of having a high salary after graduating, it’s worth it to do all of your research beforehand.

10 Law Schools Where Starting Salaries Exceed Debt [Short List / U.S. News]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. She’d love to hear from you, so feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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