The most interesting aspect of this is that starting salaries follow a bimodal distribution, with one cluster around $50K and another around $165K. This is very unusual. You would think that lawyers would follow a normal distribution, peaking in the middle, but instead the salaries suggest that there are a bunch of stars and a bunch of laggards, with very few falling between the two extremes. Bottom line: law school is very risky. If you don't reach the $165K starting peak, you fall off the cliff.