Summary Table of Likelihood of First-Year Salaries in Five Employment Areas
|
Post-Graduation Employment |
<$40K Gross Salary |
$40,001 - $55K |
$55,001 - $75K |
$75,001 - $100K |
> $100K |
N |
|
Academic |
27.4% |
42.0% |
21.5% |
5.2% |
3.9% |
307 |
|
Government |
19.7% |
37.6% |
33.8% |
6.5% |
2.4% |
2,656 |
|
Private Practice |
8.0% |
18.0% |
17.5% |
11.3% |
45.1% |
11,185 |
|
Public Interest |
34.4% |
51.7% |
12.0% |
- 2.0% - |
1,263 |
|
Business (bar passage required or JD preferred) |
10.9% |
23.5% |
33.4% |
19.7% |
12.5% |
2,449 |
The NALP career data we used to create the table above are aggregated from salary information across the country and across broader ranges of income than we provide in the Debt Wizard calculator, but they still offer an interesting framework for your investigations.
Almost 90 percent of first-year salaries in public-interest positions reported from across the country were $55,000 or less. The two highest-range salary categories present the near non-existent (2.0 percent) possibility of receiving a first-year public-interest position earning more than $75,000. We have highlighted this in the Debt Calculator by greying out the associated income columns in those graphs in which the user has selected "Public Interest" as the Post-Grad Employment type.
Source: Jobs & JD's Class of 2012, Full-Time Reported Salaries by Employer Type Table, p. 18, NALP, 2013.