A look at the law and salaries from October 1996

I was doing some spring cleaning today and came across an article from the Oct. 28, 1996 edition of US News & World Reports (pp. 89-99). The article was the "20 Hot Job Tracks" and basically outlined what jobs were hot and up and coming. While I can't imagine the actual reasons I saved this article (other than it probably had something to do with my pending college plans and having no real idea of what I wanted to do), the article has a certain nostalgic quality to it now, and warrants brief discussion.

The law entry is somewhat interesting, if only for the going rate a decade ago. The article primarily focuses on its Nostradamus-like prediction that piracy was giving intellectual property lawyers the edge as far as up and coming areas of the law. And Napster wouldn't galvanize and dominate the college downloading scene for another three years.

What is a better water cooler conversation is the salary breakdown. According to the article, the average entry level salary for an IP attorney was $49,300; the average was $312,600, and the top was $600,000. The runner up position? Corporate lawyer: "It's true that many companies have laid off attorneys. But lawyers with years of experience in securities and transactions are in short supply."

As far as the general salary info for our noble profession, here was the breakdown based on ABA's Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1995 (as printed in the article):

First-Year attorney (law firm): $49,300
General attorney (federal government): $67,900
Patent attorney (federal government): $76,300
Circuit Court Judge: $141,700
Chief Justice (U.S. Supreme Court): $171,500
Partner (Law firm): $375,900 (total compensation).

My how times have changed in only a short time. A decade later, a first year associate starts at $160,000 at a big New York firm, $120,000 for a government attorney; ($50,000 average for everyone else), patent attorney makes $115,000, the Chief Justice's salary is $217,400 and partners make much more than that. Maybe Chief Justice Roberts has a fair argument that government salaries aren't keeping pace with the private sector. Of course, the cost of debt has probably risen just as fast if not faster, and that info is much harder to come by, so who really knows whether there actually is a real difference or not. My guess is that we're (speaking on behalf of a certain range of recent grads) still doing better now than now-partners were doing when they first started.

For another interesting discussion on this topic, see Lawyers Starting Salaries-Misleading? and the BLS report dated December 2007.

Tags: average lawyer salary, average starting salary for a lawyer