Lawyer Starting Salaries
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." If you've entered law school, chances are at least one literary wag has quoted you this line from Shakespeare's
Henry the Sixth, Part II. Shakespeare may not have appreciated the finer points of legal practice, but his disapproval hasn't stopped thousands of students from completing law degrees each year. In addition to all the lawyer jokes they care to hear, prospective lawyers spend their 3 or more years of law school learning the skills and making the connections necessary to begin their legal careers (see
Median Lawyer Salaries by School Name to research how choice of law school affects lawyer salaries). Hoping that all that hard work will pay off, law students all want to know: what are lawyer starting salaries like?
Like with many careers that require a graduate degree, lawyer starting salaries are typically fairly high. The
Lawyer Starting Salary chart shows that for a lawyer, average starting salary is around $56,000. Compare lawyer starting salaries with the
starting salary of a physical therapist - a profession that also requires extensive training, but no degree - and you can see that there are definite benefits to spending that time in law school. However, a lawyer's average starting salary is just a jumping-off point: in 20 years of experience, the average salary for a lawyer more than doubles.
Lawyer salaries are determined by a number of factors, such as the kind of law being practiced. The
Average Salary for a Lawyer by Practice Area report shows that the average annual salary of a lawyer working in corporate law, business, mergers & acquisitions is currently the highest, followed by litigation & appeals. Viewing PayScale's
Salary Data by Industry for the average annual salary of a lawyer, Government and Insurance stand out as the most lucrative industries for a legal eagle. Big-city lawyers are in luck: researching
Lawyer Salaries by City, we can see that the average salary for a lawyer is highest in Washington, Los Angeles and New York.
Average Salary for a Lawyer
A good lawyer knows that sometimes, the question itself can be just as important as the answer. Find out why asking "what are median lawyer salaries" is a better question than "what is the average salary for a lawyer" in the Ask Dr. Salary article, "
Why is Median Better than Mean for a Typical Salary?"
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