enough money to retire at fifty

What? If you’re looking at big law, which doesn’t like failed academics btw but they’re desperate for bodies, most people only make it a couple of years. I had a colleague who was gun ho about her big law job after our clerkship. She didn’t make 4 yrs. Even at the increased salaries, you might crack $750k total in 4 yrs. After income taxes and the money spent to play the big law game, you ain’t gonna have close to anything to retire, so then you have to move to not big law. Those lawyers make more realistic upper middle class $$, in the $100ks/annually. You ain’t gonna retire at 50 bud on that route. To retire at 50, youd need to spend at least a decade in big law/male partner, but that’s way way harder than academia.