if starting out now, are careers in PE now objectively worse than Law?
Compensation
- First-year associate salaries at BigLaw (Tier 1) firms in 2025 are typically $215,000–$225,000 (not just $200,000+) in major markets123.
- Total compensation for senior associates (7th–8th year) can reach $535,000–$575,000 including bonuses at top firms2.
- Mid-sized firms offer lower starting salaries, typically $155,000–$200,0001.
Job Security & Retention
- Attrition rates are higher than 10%. In 2023, the average associate attrition rate at large U.S. law firms was 18%456.
- Optimal/target retention rates for law firms are considered to be 85–90%, but actual rates are often lower65.
- Most associates leave their firms within five years: 82% of departures in 2023 were associates with ≤5 years at the firm5.
Career Progression
- Promotion to partner is highly selective:
- The typical timeline to partnership is 8–12 years78.
- Far fewer than 50% of associates are promoted to partner. Most sources suggest only 10–30% of associates at large firms eventually become partners, and many firms have expanded non-equity partner roles978.
- The majority of associates leave or move to other roles before reaching partnership578.
Global Mobility
- International presence is strong but not universal:
Career Flexibility
- Moves to in-house roles:
Work-Life Balance
- Hybrid work is common, but not universal:
- In 2023, about 61% of U.S. law firms permitted some hybrid wor
50% of biglaw associates do not end up as partner lmao.
An 8th year associate makes what (11 years of experience - 3 of law school but 8 at a firm) a 2nd year PE associate (4 years of experience) makes.
thanks for pointing that out, im gonna be honest i used the free version (without logging in) of chatgpt ai to write this shit. i have now edited the thread contents after using my premium perplexity ai account
Good to know that the quality of posts on this site are only improving!
To be super clear, what’s the 2nd year PE associate number you’re thinking of here — presumably not OPs number here?
From what I’ve heard/ seen, in a PE associate program, there isn’t really a big jump from year 1 to 2 but obviously you’d expect more of a jump at VP level…
I also agree that from a variety of POVs PE > law, but impotent to note that there are tons of law firms that pay the cravath scale, and very few tippy top paying MFs and a more diverse set of MM and LMM firms out there, but even then, if you could wave a magic wand, you’d probably prefer being at a $1B+ fund size firm as a PE associate over a big law associate (though obviously again requires very different skills and if you had the skills for one , you probably wouldn’t have the skills for the other and vice versa)
I'm thinking of the "$535,000–$575,000" range OP posts, so let's assume USD 550k.
Yes because I want to go to 3 years of school to make… exactly what I make right now?
Yes law is better than banking or PE nowadays.
But, also higher sunk cost. If you hate banking or PE, plenty of optionality but if you take out $200k in loans you’re stuck in law for a bit.
You're not a machine to put side by side statistics and say fine, then this is better.
Billing hours in biglaw is fucking hell and you have no optionality* - so good luck if you wake up in your 2nd year hating law, because your only exit op is the back office of big companies (in-house counsel) and you're seen as a cost center. Also lawyers compete for them like it was a NFL draft.
All your career you'll have no decision-making power whatsoever, you'll be just a paper pusher and any advice you'll try to give on business matters no one will care/will tell you to stick on legal things. Your only way to escape it would be to rebrand yourself with an MBA, so good luck throwing, again - if law school wasn't enoug - the opportunity cost of an MBA (500k-1m estimated depending on the role you leave).
If you're smart enough to do law school, you're smart enough to make it in business/finance (also, all your classmates that want to do biglaw can't differentiate between revenue and net income, which is a plus because you'll be seen as the most commercial savy but also demotivating working side by side with people who ask you if Apollo is a commercial bank).
*the optionality is also why making partner in biglaw is probably harder relative to finance: There are no exits/no other profitable paths in law, so almost everyone sticks with it because of lack of alternatives (more competition/more neediness on the role = more psychopathic behavior).
Uhhh...no. Now go bill some hours and turn these SPA comments and get this issues list back to the seller. And learn some basic math. And social skills.
Imagine being a lawyer for a week lmaoo
Maybe stating the obvious, but you used ChatGPT to write the post...
I would argue that AI is putting law jobs at-risk (particularly entry level associate jobs) much faster than finance jobs (which are a bit more multi-dimensional). This is a huge risk to the legal industry IMO. Lawyers won't go away obviously, but it seems like far fewer will be required.
Actually, the opposite is true in all likelihood and it has little to do with the work itself.
Law has cartel-like protections similar to medicine where the only people who decide whether or not somebody/something can practice law are lawyers (and legislators, many of whom also have law degrees). This is one structural barrier to AI taking over the profession. Also, people pay lawyers to avert risk, something that will if anything grow as there becomes a need to check AI generated outputs. Finally, there is the ultimate backstop of the judicial system which will out of any system/segment of the workforce be most adverse to using AI.
On the other hand, finance/coding are just as susceptible to AI induced job loss from a work standpoint but also operate in industries with fewer structural barriers to job loss (many of these employers are also public which means immediate quarterly pressure to cut costs and jobs as soon as use cases for AI are found). Finance/coding are also less abstracted from formal logic because they deal with numbers. This in turn means that AI will be better able to parse the optimal output when compared to law, which deals with relatively more abstract questions of language.
Probably, there will be significant job loss in either sector at some point, though.
Completely disagree / you're missing SaasChimp's point. Saaschimp is correct. Law is more at risk from AI than finance. Especially lower-level law associates serving corporate/finance clients. Clients can just look up basics stuff now rather than ping counsel for every single question. Billable hours are down etc. They won't need as much staff. Period end of story.
What Associate PE said. What´s the use of being a lawyer, if the demand of your services gets cut by like 70% because people exploit GPT instead of coming to you
Also clients are pushing for more transparency regarding how many hours of lawyer input vs. AI was done in the work. Why would I pay 100k for legal fees when the bill tells me that 80% was done by AI? I might develop my legal AI internally and let my in-house counsel pull all the weight alone.
As a matter of fact, the main reasons that lots of in-house cousnels relied on external law firms was because they did not have the manpower to take care of more complex issues/didn't had the time for it and it was cheaper to outsource it than to recruit people. Now, if I have an AI tha resembles a team of 40 lawyers, this will reduce even more demand for external law firms.
Let me put this discussion to a rest: there is literally no career worse than law.
Some of you all truly have no idea how soul sucking Big Law - and yes I’m including private equity and banking
Echoing the comments above, Big Law is brutal and not worth doing unless you love being a lawyer. It attracts the most risk-averse hardos who will be your competition to make partner... and btw it's becoming harder and harder to get to true equity partner as they stack more interim titles in front of the equity brass ring.
Ultimately figure out what makes you tick and pursue that - you will make plenty of money in Big Law, PE, IBD, corp fin, and dozens of other careers if you solve for something you like (duration >> everything).
I have meet hundreds of lawyers and maybe personally know like 50+ (went to a target studying a humanities, so a lot of my friends either were pre-law or ended up going into law school and also dating a lawyer) vast majority of whom went to top 14 law schools... literally can count on one hand how many do not despise their job. This list includes big law partners and in-house counsel. Yes, some people are senior in finance who hate their job. Still, rate is closer to 1/3rd to 1/2 as opposed to like 90% because the nice thing with finance is that there are significantly more career paths that pay you very well compared to the average American while for law it's either big law or corporate in-house consul or judge (you are not going to be a judge probably, it's the equivalent of being worth 100+MMM from a finance career in terms of difficulty/rarity).
you only make money if you take risk.
as a lawyer, there is zero risk to your job...
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