But a lawyer without fail requires a law-school education. My impression is that top-notch firms that pay big bucks prefer to hire folks from elite law schools. And elite law schools have an expectation that their students will go to work at top-notch firms that pay out big, and therefore they can get away with charging their students more. It’s a catch-22. The elite schools won’t start charging less until fewer students want to attend them. And that will only happen when top-notch firms start passing over elite-school grads en-masse. The salary spike starts at the top, not with the students.

He’s also talking about a lot besides the education. The city-center rents and lifestyle have a lot to do with it too. Aside from buying a solid, appropriate work wardrobe, your expenses as a first-year associate don’t have to be high. You could live out of the city and commute; you could drink at bars in the suburbs where drinks cost $5 instead of $15 or $25. Many associates don’t choose these options, in large part because they know they get paid a shit-ton of money, and because the really aggressive ones know they can leave for other options- as he points out later in the article.

Things such as ever-increasing law school debt are a prerequisite for entering the law profession. They’re not a “gulfstream jet” perk that you always fantasized about and just happened to incur. They’re an up-front expense that must be incurred to enter a given profession and (more importantly) must be paid back. It makes sense that as *law-school* debt rises, the expected entry-level *lawyer* salary rises similarly to offset the increased debt incurred. Or else people will decide that the $100k investment (not “cost”) in themselves isn’t worth it and become a garbageman instead, causing a relative scarcity of new lawyers. Which should drive up entry-level salaries even further. Free markets and all that.