Big Law Investor

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/

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-curve/

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 salaries are bound to suffer the same fate. [1] https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16337434 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588202 [4] https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/

That $25,550 average for college graduation debt is out of date.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-statistics/ And Law doesn't even pay that great if you're not at the tippy top of your class anymore. The average salary for that is at $82k a year. I'm making more than that, and my student loans (that were only $25k at their max) have been really annoying. I can't imagine being able to pay $140k of loans for a Law degree while only making $82k a year. Source: https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/

Even lawyer pay isn't as great as it may appear. See: "Lawyer Salaries Are Weird" http://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/

So roughly the equivalent of bonuses for 2 attorneys at a big law firm. https://www.biglawinvestor.com/biglaw-salary-scale/

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/

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 security of the profession and few that make partner and rake in decent cash, which is only like average FANG entry salaries, the only difference is that they have to go through a professional degree and often incur huge amounts of debt just to get there. [1] https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/

Salaries in law are famously bimodal: https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/ 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 connections get paid extremely high salaries because they are only competing with each other.

I 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-curve/

Yep, agreed. Here's an article for the bimodal nature of starting salaries for lawyers for interested parties: https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/ 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 the upper end of the bimodal curve.

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-curve/

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-aggregation-rule-on-… 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 funds to a Roth 401k. Another detail, you may see discussion about avoiding the "Step Doctrine" for backdoor Roth contributions. This is no longer required as the IRS has blessed Back Door contributions, after an obscure footnote in a 2018 congressional report. - Footnote Commentary: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2018/01/22/congress-blesses… - IRS Explicitly Acknowledges: https://www.napa-net.org/news-info/daily-news/case-week-de-villainizin… - More: https://www.fa-mag.com/news/irs-finally-says-back-door-roth-s-are-ok-3… - https://www.physicianonfire.com/backdoor/ - https://www.biglawinvestor.com/backdoor-roth-ira-step-by-step-guide/

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 company is in California you aren't allowed to hire someone from Ohio without doing a bunch of extra paperwork and expenses. I got a job offer for a company in San Francisco but wasn't sure about it 100% or if it'd last so I thought trying remote would be interesting and then transition but the HR person told me no even though she was interested in me. But I guess they didn't want to register in other states, paying taxes in multiple states, payroll, some states require worker comp and probably applies if you work from home even, etc as it would create a bigger Nexus for a company with a handful of requirements for a state the HR person has never even visited or has an address in the state even (so they have to pay for a virtual office service, a agent for the company in the state and add extra costs and administration since some states won't accept a out of state address for some paperwork). So many companies unless it's already big with locations all over the US rather just deal with a single state for now... Then businesses large enough to meet the requirement…