Nobody seems to have told the young people trying to get into law school, or the law schools themselves for that matter, that the $200,000 lawyer jobs practically don’t exist anymore.  Why are law school tuitions so expensive? The market just doesn’t accept those kinds of costs anymore.

Today, whether you the a scientist or a lawyer or happen to work at any of a number of prestigious jobs, you usually find that there are just two tiers of jobs in your field – there is a small number of permanent positions that pays reasonably well, and there are the have-nots.

These aren’t people who have no college education. Usually, these are people with the same kinds of qualifications as the people in the well-paying positions. But they are forced to accept shadow jobs that have no prestige and no perks.

Most new lawyer jobs today pay you what paralegals or legal secretaries used to make 15 years ago. They have the same qualifications and the same potential as any other lawyer. But they are hired as contract workers and always will be. And oh, they will never be on path to making partner. Their salaries may be satisfactory at $50,000 a year – but it isn’t what the lawyer is supposed be making.

The law firms have a good argument to defend their decision to strip down what being a lawyer means. Cutting down pay means they won’t need to ship jobs to India and China. And for the pay cut, they expect less – lawyers no longer have to stay married to the office. They are not expected to travel or give their lives up. They feel they these new lawyer jobs are kind of family friendly.

People blame the recession quite squarely for all of this of course. Clients just aren’t willing to pay lawyers their inflated rates anymore. Law firms have found themselves in a position where they can’t really cut down on the kind of salary they offer to all the lawyers.

If they did that, they would lose talent, and their reputation. Among the legal profession, they would come to be known as low-level firms. For this reason, they’ve devised this ingenious two-tier system – where they continue to pay a handful of associate lawyers what they always did, but pay all the other lawyers a fraction of that sum. It gets the job done and it helps them save face.

It’s like the associate lawyers are the union workers and everyone else is just a poor bloke who is new to the game. They call them career associates. It’s like outsourcing right within this country – to a poor part of town or to a poor suburb. Lawyers fresh out of legal school with $150,000 loans find this very inconvenient. But there are lawyers who find this very convenient too. The traditional career path of the lawyer requires total dedication. People quickly burn out living life like that.