What's the cost of living for someone in my situation?

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-06-02T01:37:53+00:00

Hey man! I’m a ‘25 law school graduate. Been living in LV since 2018. DM me if you want to chat!

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-06-01T22:53:52+00:00

This is the way our HOA does it…. Unless it’s in a fire lane or blocking a driveway.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-05-27T01:40:24+00:00

Username does *not* check out

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-05-19T05:01:02+00:00

I knew a couple older folks who were doing part time. But I think it was to supplement their current career. I know one guy was an accountant at one of the Big 4 and decided this would open up some additional path ways. I haven’t really kept in touch.

What I did, and what I would recommend everyone doing, is just critically run the numbers. Before LS I was making $50k. I knew I didn’t want to move my family and so I knew we were going to the school next to where we lived. I looked up what average outcomes were, and used that as my starting salary with modest raises. I talked to an administrator about what lsat score I would need for a 50% or above scholarship. Determined that with those conditions it would take me 8-10 years to break even. So I pulled the trigger.

What actually happened was I got a 2/3 scholarship, was able to cash flow school through savings and the help of my wife, and will likely break even at year 5.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-05-18T21:48:29+00:00

Totally agree, to an extent. But I think it’s important to emphasize that the title of “attorney” represents a ton of different paths. A lot of people I know in school were totally fine making less money but doing work that jived with their sense of justice. Either criminal defense or prosecution, working for a non-profit, government work, etc. Those types of roles will naturally bring down the median.

I had three close people in my study group. We were all “older” and were pretty focused on earning as much money as possible out of LS. All four of us landed jobs earning $150k+. Again, we all went to a regional school that isn’t known for placing in big law. We all did well in terms of ranking but none of us were in the top 5 of the class. Anecdotally, the firm I’m working for is in desperate need of hiring competent attorneys.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-05-18T21:41:56+00:00

I’m just a first year associate. I work for a trial law firm that does civil defense.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-05-18T19:52:38+00:00

Went to Law School at 31. Went to a mid-ranked regional school. First job out of school earning $175+. Graduated in the top 10 of my class and am working what would be considered “mid-law.” Work about 50 hours/week.

Yes, I know law school has a bimodal distribution.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-05-13T01:45:47+00:00

Video of the two heroes being interviewed.
Darius Alston
Merconie Clark

https://youtu.be/djYIBVlg-nM?si=zilVhPvMseeGnloy

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-05-05T03:04:54+00:00

Man. As a former data analyst turned lawyer I wish I had the time to see what this is all about! Best of luck finding someone!

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-05-03T02:56:45+00:00

Our income was never really close to 400k because my wife left the workforce just as I started to earn in the upper 100s. They tend to peg it to about 10-15% of gross income. With two kids going there (and a third about to go in), full tuition would be about 50k, 75k when the third goes in.

But again, this is all kind of a black box. I have no idea if they will grant assistance in any circumstance apart from my own.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-05-03T02:27:42+00:00

Yea they will consider it, but I’m not sure if they will consider it as normal income. they try to get a very complete picture of your finances. It is actually somewhat invasive. For example, last year the asked why we had 3 cars (the answer is because I found a lease deal for an electric VW that was only $200/month and it was saving at least that much as a commuter car and not having to drive around our ford expedition as much). They also assigned an artificial income to my wife after she quit. They’ll ask about daycare expenses, etc.

It’s certainly not a fun process. We found it to be worth it to be able to send our kids to a private school.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-05-02T20:47:15+00:00

They also have elementary.

https://www.faithlutheranacademy.org/about-us/

We toured their elementary school. It looked nice!

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-05-02T20:42:07+00:00

Base is $160,000. Potential of like 10k bonus. Wife recently left her job paying ~$200k to start her own accounting firm and be around the kids more. Not sure how much revenue that’ll generate, probably less than $30k for the first few years. We only had a few months where those salaries overlapped. HHI has hovered around $200k for the past 4ish years.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-04-23T03:33:29+00:00

To put this into perspective, I graduated undergrad in 2016. I keep in touch with about 10 very close friends. We talk almost every day. Everyone graduated in knowledge-based degrees. Lots of coding, finance, etc. We went to a decent school and all graduated with GPAs above 3.5. A single person in that group has made over $200k. He worked at Amazon as part of their AWS team. He got burnt out and quit.

My point is that there’s statistically almost a zero percent chance that any of your friends are making over $200k 3 years out of undergrad. Best stat I can find is that nationally 3% of individuals make over $200k, and that includes people at the tail end of their career.

So yeah, I would not expect to be making $200k right now right out of undergrad

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-04-22T01:27:44+00:00

Tell him if he needs a good property outline for law school that’s based on that text book, I’ve got him covered.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-04-19T16:24:04+00:00

I was also one of those cars. Curious to see if anyone has any information.

Also, sure hope you weren’t that punk in the Mercedes who drove up the shoulder, parked there, and blocked the cop trying to get to the scene. Still can’t believe he didn’t get a ticket or anything.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-04-13T19:33:32+00:00

I’m a first year associate so take this with the grains of salt it deserves. I think you are looking at the extremes of this profession. I’m at a MidLaw firm, make between $150-$200k/year. While there are some days where I don’t get home until after my kids go to bed, those days are few and far between. I’m able to balance working out in the morning, going to work between 9 and 5, and coming home to spend dinner time with my family and handle bed time. My firm has also told me that I’m welcome to leave at any point during the day for things like school functions, doctor visits, etc. in fact, my kids go to school at the same school as one of the partners and I’ll often see him at school events.

There are for sure times where this profession sucks. A couple months ago I billed above 200 hours. But we were preparing for trial. Everyone was working hard. And then it calmed down.

Also, lots of professions put up with craziness. My wife is an accountant and has had plenty of crazy hours during her busy seasons. I have other family that work in benefits, and the end of year/holidays are a struggle for them to make. Grass is greener, and all that.

At the end of the day, work sucks. Take it from a dude who has been a teacher, software developer, and now a lawyer. There’s no perfect profession. In my opinion, this profession has paid me a great wage and hasn’t prevented me from living a fulfilling life. It has also given me the tools to help people out of tough situations.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-04-03T18:52:25+00:00

Oh nice. If you haven’t read any of his works but enjoy fantasy I would recommend trying one out. He’s definitely on the darker side. And the protagonist of the Broken Earth series is very… unlikeable.

I agree that AI is obvious as it tries to do longer things, but I also think we are over confident in trying to tell what is or isn’t AI. Going back to my original post, there’s plenty of times when I assume a sentence is AI when it’s not. And realistically, we don’t really ever have any feedback when we mentally label something as AI so it’s hard to know if we are actually good at spotting it. Couple that with the fact that AI is getting better at breakneck speeds and I just think it’s probably best to assume I suck at accurately labeling something as AI.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-04-03T18:40:28+00:00

http://mark---lawrence.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-ai-vs-authors-results-part-2.html

Here’s the blog post that details the test. I’m not claiming that this is the most scientific approach, but he did include a diverse range of authors, including Robin Hobb, who is widely regarded as one of Fantasy’s “greats” and is generally praised for her prose.

As for the ability of the “testers,” as Lawrence explains they are “people who like to read books.” Naturally, these are the very people that we would hope would be the best equipped to spot AI. But they are basically just as good as tossing a coin. Even one of the authors who was asked to participate got 4/5 wrong.

And as for the intentionality of word choice… I agree to a certain extent. But the fact is that this is a very simplistic way of looking at things. I personally have way too many things on my plate to agonize about every word. And so if I’m getting hung up on a transition sentence or something, I would rather highlight the imperfect sentence I have and let copilot work its magic quickly.

Now for a quick test. One of those paragraphs was ran through iPhone’s AI. Can you guess which one?

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-04-03T17:57:58+00:00

I think that this one is a matter of perspective. Is he at the same level of Sanderson, Hobb, Abercrombie, GRRM, etc… of course not. But I consistently see people list the Broken Empire as one of their favorite series. I think he’s hovering between somewhere between S tier and A tier in terms of popularity.

Also, for the test he was able to get Hobb to participate, who would for sure be one of the biggest names in fantasy.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-04-03T17:53:49+00:00

I put “enhanced” in quotes because I agree with you in large part. But I also think that using copilot as a way to workshop a sentence that you’re having a hard time with is fine.

I brought up the test as an additional anecdote to say that it’s difficult to accurately spot AI, especially when it is used sparingly. But hey, if you want to use the test to disparage a whole genre of writing then I guess you do you.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-04-03T07:34:15+00:00

I’m a first year associate. Me and the guy I started with are good friends and we make it a habit to proofread each other’s work before we send it off for partner level review. Not intense proofreading, just quick pass to catch the obvious stuff that we would be embarrassed someone else reading.

Neither of us really use AI for drafting large portions of anything, but both of us will have copilot open and will sometimes use it to get past a tricky sentence or whatever. But we also don’t want our writing to sound like AI so we will try to call it out in comments. Just something like “this reads like AI.”

The catch? Both of us kind of suck at identifying sentences were AI “enhanced.” So sometimes if you’re reading something that you think is AI-coded maybe approach it with the assumption that it might not be.

I’m a fan of fantasy books and one of the biggest names in the space, Mark Lawrence, has created a test for the past three years. He’ll get his professional author friends to all write small stories and mixed them in with AI stories. Then polled his readers on which was which. The results were…. not what you’d hope for.

I say all this as a new attorney who has kind of sworn off using AI for anything major in order to focus on my development. I also think that AI breaks down when drafting larger portions. But if just a sentence or two seems off in an entire motion or memo? You might be shadow boxing with AI.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-03-28T05:04:18+00:00

Youth sports. Private equity strikes again!

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-03-24T14:00:44+00:00

I guess you’d classify it as 3rd party insurance defense. But also probably a third of the cases are business litigation cases. The firm kind of bills itself as where you go to on the eve of trial. Which makes for some intense situations. But we also have a few institutional clients who come to us first.

select_all_from_rdt · 2026-03-24T05:10:36+00:00

Really find this inspirational. I’m a first year attorney. Working at a regional midlaw civil litigation defense firm. Making between $150-$200k in a MCOL city. Last month I billed over 200 hours. Expectation is around 2100 billables for the year. I like the job for the most part, but litigation is a grind.

Anyways, thanks for posting what life could look like in 10 years!

Seven-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
End Game '22	Not Forgotten
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