When you start your first lawyer job at $65K a year or higher, one analysis finds.

Some say that’s too low (obviously, the methodology is debatable), but to have a 50-50-plus shot of hitting even that number, you have to go to one of the top 70 or so law schools in the country. The median starting salary for a lawyer is right around $57,000, so more than half of law-school students are probably wasting their money.