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Biglaw Investor
Personal blog · biglawinvestor.comeconomicscareer
Biglaw Investor is a personal blog at biglawinvestor.com about economics and career. Since 2017, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 19 times. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (17) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for its data on lawyer pay, especially the bimodal salary distribution and the Biglaw salary scale. Comments use it to explain why law salaries are two-tiered and move in lockstep.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 17 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
This is a finance and investing blog for smart lawyers who want to build wealth and achieve financial independence. Come join us.
Most-linked posts?
- /bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2018-02-21
- /biglaw-salary-scale/3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-09-28
What Hacker News says?
Even lawyer pay isn't as great as it may appear. See: "Lawyer Salaries Are Weird" http://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-cu...
Comment linking /bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/
on “Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level”Submitted Secrets of a $100M Roth IRA as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYep, agreed. Here's an article for the bimodal nature of starting salaries for lawyers for interested parties: https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-c... The upper end of the biglaw salaries was capped because of an unspoken "cartel pricing cap". Big law firms don't want to compete for the upper-echelon talent. Not sure if tech companies will be able to informally collude in such a manner to cap…
Comment linking /bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/
on ““Location-Based Pay” – Who are we to complain?”Submitted NY’s Telecommuting Tax Penalty as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI thought a large number of lawyers end up not earning much? And straight out of university, you really can’t look at the average, because the income distribution of lawyers is extremely bimodal in the US: https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-c...
Comment linking /bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/
on “The unusual ways Western parents raise children”Salaries in law are famously bimodal: https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-c... Law is a very status-conscious industry (even more than software) and so most of that oversupply of law graduates are not "in the club". They get paid relatively low wages and have to fight with each other for peanuts. Some much smaller fraction of law graduates from top schools or who otherwise have the right conne…
Comment linking /bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/
on “Anime is booming, so why are animators living in poverty?”I think there is a lot of truth to this. Big Law is a great example of this, where the nearly every firm operates in lockstep on the Craveth Scale[1]. If one firm increases salary, every other firm will for for same cycle. https://www.biglawinvestor.com/biglaw-salary-scale/
Comment linking /biglaw-salary-scale/
on “Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries”>Just look at the alternative like say lawyers - you have to suck up to your higher-ups for many years before getting any way ahead. Pretty bad example in my opinion. Top law firms have fixed seniority based compensation. They firms all pay the same and move in lockstep unison. https://www.biglawinvestor.com/biglaw-salary-scale/
Comment linking /biglaw-salary-scale/
on “Norway's sovereign wealth fund to vote against Apple management's pay plan”Yes, what you want to look into if you have existing traditional-IRA dollars is the "Pro-Rata Rule". See: https://www.kitces.com/blog/the-impact-of-the-ira-aggregatio... Backdoor Roth: Contribute $6,000 in after-tax dollars to IRA, Immediately convert IRA --> Roth IRA. File Form 8606. Mega Backdoor Roth: Contribute a total of ($56,00 - ($19,500 + Employer Match)) as After Tax contributions to a 401K. Convert those f…
Comment linking /backdoor-roth-ira-step-by-step-guide/
on “Making $100k as an Employee versus Being Self-Employed”Although average wages are around 75k, wages of lawyers are two tiered, the majority settle around ~55k and then prominent lawyers who went to good schools and were groomed to become partners make over triple that [1]. So it is a lot like other professional white collar professions like accounting where there are huge amounts of extremely overworked people in entry level jobs who were suckered into the perceived sec…
Comment linking /bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/
on “Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble”That $25,550 average for college graduation debt is out of date. As of 2016, that number is up to $37,172, which itself was up from $35k the previous year. It's probably up to close to $40k as of this year. It breaks it down further in there. For combined undergraduate and graduate programs, getting an MS brings it up to $50k, Law is $140k, Medicine is $160k. Source: https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-sta…
Comment linking /bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/
on “After Decades of Growth, Colleges Find It’s Survival of the Fittest”Lawyer salaries follow a bimodal distribution[1], that's why the median isn't very helpful. Besides showing the distribution (what the article does) the more interesting figures would be the two modes. What might be relevant for the discussion here is that lawyer salaries have been unimodal 25 years ago but have changed over the course of time. It has been argued here on HN [2][3] and elsewhere [4] that developer sa…
Comment linking /bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/
on “Ask HN: What other good careers exist for those without a college education?”I like the idea of work in a way, but I also think the in person connections are valuable. Maybe a company could have a hybrid of that idea, allow people to work at home but also have a office that's sorta more like a co-working space but open to their employees only. Then another thing that's lame about remote work is you have to limit the location people can work remotely due to employment regulations, so if your…
Comment linking /new-york-telecommuting-tax-penalty/
on “The Coronavirus Is Forcing Techies to Work from Home. Some May Never Go Back”The bimodal distribution of salaries [1] might support the idea of different stories at different levels within the legal world. Note this bimodality seems to have appeared around the year 2000 [2]. [1]: https://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib [2]: https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-c...
Comment linking /bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/
on “The modern law firm: not all partners are created equal, data and billings rule”If you are frustrated with your 401(k) management, consider rolling it over to an IRA so you can direct it yourself. https://www.biglawinvestor.com/partial-401k-rollover/
Comment linking /partial-401k-rollover/
on “Swedish pension giant loses $1.1 billion from US banks’ collapse”It can be difficult to overcome initial conditions and shine if you are locked out of the best opportunities. The bimodal outcomes for law school graduates are a good example. That’s not how the whole economy works, but it is a potential failure mode. https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-c...
Comment linking /bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/
on “The case for mutual educational disarmament”So roughly the equivalent of bonuses for 2 attorneys at a big law firm. https://www.biglawinvestor.com/biglaw-salary-scale/
Comment linking /biglaw-salary-scale/
on “Lawyers cough up $200k after health data stolen in Microsoft Exchange pillaging”Nah. Biglaw associates start @ 215k [0]. A crushing life though, according to most of my acquaintances in the field. [0] https://www.biglawinvestor.com/biglaw-salary-scale/
Comment linking /biglaw-salary-scale/
on “Price of Law School Hits New High at Columbia ($110,450), Others Close Behind”Read up on the Cravath system for determining lawyer salary[1]. Every top "biglaw" firm in the US pays the same salary and publishes them. This has been found not be collusion because there is no agreement or requirement they stick to the price. Every once in a while, one law firm will defect and raise salary, and every other law firm will update theirs within a week to the new rate. https://www.biglawinvestor.com/b…
Comment linking /biglaw-salary-scale/
on “Big landlords used software to collude on rent prices, DC lawsuit says”
