<p>cbreeze: yes I am. Sue me.</p>
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Here are exerpts from one more article about the cost of housing in Manhattan from the New York Times. I hope that you will find it informative!
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<p>Again, I return back to my basic point. The problems of cost-of-living in New York are not specific to lawyers, but rather are characteristic of * everybody * who wants to live in New York. There are a lot of people who manage to live in New York (yes, including Manhattan) on far less money than a 1st-year law firm associate will make, even if you do subtract out some salary to pay down your student debt. Lawyers are still better off than most other New Yorkers are.</p>
<p>What can I say? That's the New York lifestyle. That's what you have to put up with in order to live in, what is arguably the world's most interesting city. Just think of it this way. There's a basic fundamental reason for why New York is so expensive - it's because there's a plethora of cool things to do there, and a lot of economic opportunity. Ultimately, that's what you're really paying for. If New York wasn't such a desirable place, the cost of living wouldn't be so high. </p>
<p>Now of course, desirability is not the only factor at play. Certainly, government policy (i.e. rent control that exacerbates price competition for un-controlled lots), consumer inertia, and other factors also play roles. But at the end of the day, location desirability is the key driving force, for without that, nothing else would matter. Put another way, if there was nothing culturally interesting about the city and there was no economic opportunity there, I'm sure the cost of living would drop off a cliff.</p>
<p>The cost of housing in New York, I've heard, means that young people rarely have enough space to entertain guests comfortably in their homes. It's more cost effective to rent space by the hour, in effect, by getting together with friends in a restaurant, or a club. The high cost of housing actually contributes to the wealth of things to do in New York. (I have heard similar things about Paris.) That also seems to be the case in the most cities in Asia.</p>
<p>but after the first few years, does your salary increase with bonuses or just an increase of the base salary? the top 20 law school graduates, i am sure, do not only make about 140-160 K per year for their entire careers, right?</p>
<p>The base salary goes up every year and that varies quite a bit from firm to firm. There are also bonuses, which can be quite substantial. Most bonuses kick in after a certain number of hours billed and then go up according to the hours. There may be another bonus based on performance goals. Here is an example of the base salaries by year at a prominent DC based firm. This firm has since raised its first year salary to $160K but the increases between years are probably about the same. </p>
<p>1st Year $145,000<br>
2nd Year $155,000<br>
3rd Year $170,000<br>
4th Year $190,000<br>
5th Year $210,000<br>
6th Year $225,000<br>
7th Year $240,000<br>
8th Year $250,000</p>
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<p>Woah, a professor of law at a top-10 university earns <em>LESS</em> than a first-year associate graduating from the same institution? That’s some seriously disturbed wealth distribution function! Do these profs augment their income by moonlighting on the side (i.e. serve as counsel, expert witnesses, etc.) ?</p>
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<p>I think the (median) law profs have it pretty good. The median law prof is tenured, which means that he can never be fired, except in highly specific circumstances (i.e. he gets caught stealing money from the school or you never show up to the classes you are supposed to teach). Think about that. You basically have a job and a guaranteed income stream for life. You don’t have to constantly worry about landing and maintaining clientele, you don’t have to worry about economic recessions, you don’t even have to worry about winning your cases. Basically, you no longer have to work hard or produce quality work. You can teach your classes poorly, you can do write legal research papers of poor quality (or write none at all), and it doesn’t matter. You’ve locked in an annuity for the rest of your life. </p>
<p>Now, granted, most tenured law profs won’t let their quality of their work degrade, if nothing else, then for their own professional pride. They still care about teaching a good class. They still care about producing quality research. </p>
<p>But they have the security of knowing that they don’t have to care. They know they can let their quality slip and they’ll still have a job. Yeah, they may lose professional status within the academic community. But they’ll still have a job. They can’t be fired. </p>
<p>There’s a huge difference between working hard because you want to impress your colleagues and working hard because you’ll be fired if you don’t. It comes down to doing something because you want to do it, and doing something because you have to do it. </p>
<p>Besides, I would also point to the very high quality of life within tenured academia: certainly far more so than in BIGLAW. Academia is highly flexible and family-friendly. You are generally required to be on campus only maybe half of the day (whenever you are teaching and in administrative meetings + seminars). Your summers are off. You get long holiday breaks. Now, to be sure, a lot of tenured faculty will continue to come to the office anyway. But that’s by choice. They don’t have to be there. They have control over their time that most in BIGLAW can only dream of having.</p>
<p>I forgot about all those ‘soft’ factors that make academia a cushy lifestyle for some.</p>
<p>But I assume (based on academia in general), that getting tenured, is every bit as brutal/stressful as working in a practicing biglaw firm…</p>
<p>^For some state systems like the UCs, it also means health benefits for life.</p>
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<p>I doubt it even comes close. Legal academia is pretty cushy.</p>
<p>tenure=a job secured for life?</p>
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<p>Yep, that’s the cushy part about academia. Like I said, apart from egregious misconduct (i.e. you don’t even show up to teach your own classes, or you get caught plagiarizing your papers), you have a job for life. That’s a key reason why people are attracted to the academic lifestyle.</p>
<p>can someone get a JD and work for like 10 years as a lawyer and then become a professor and get tenure?</p>
<p>I assume that you mean 10 years of private practice, and the answer is, probably not. Once you’ve practiced as a lawyer for ‘too long’, the perception will be that you don’t have a high commitment to academia and hence you are pursuing it only because you couldn’t make partner in a private firm, or if you did make partner, that you don’t actually enjoy the life of a practicing lawyer. Not because you actually want to be an academic. </p>
<p>We can debate what exactly it means to be ‘too long’, but I think there is little dispute that 10 years qualifies as too long. Many law professors are hired with little if any practical experience. Barack Obama, for example, became a prof at the University of Chicago while having no practical legal experience other than his law school summer internships.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that Law Professors at top schools often feel that they have to leave any substantial legal work they have done off of their CV’s for fear that it will be looked negatively upon during their job search. I would think that this is less true at lower ranked schools.</p>
<p>how does one even go about becoming a law professor. i mean what you are supposed to do between the time you graduate and become a professor, assuming you can become a professor right away. if you cant do private practice, your only option would be to do governemtn or public service work?</p>
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<p>Many (probably most) professors were federal clerks before they got their first teaching job. A federal appellate clerkship (especially in the 2nd, 7th, 9th or DC Circuit) is a pretty good stepping stone to a teaching job.</p>
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<p>You could become the first ever African-American President of the Harvard Law Review.</p>
<p>Oh wait, I guess that’s already been done.</p>