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Related Discussions
Route to Early Retirement with Law??
LawSchoolClassof_2022
Alum Member
I would like to retire around 40.
Barring crazy circumstances --inheriting money from a long-lost uncle, inventing the next FB, etc-- what would that look like with a law degree? I am 22 right now, plan to start law school in '19 and be finished by '22, at 26. Would you go Big Law for 14 years and try to make partner really early? Try to find a niche and start your own law firm? Consult? Work internationally? I live a very modest life, have no undergrad debt, and can't see myself living "big" even if I had the money. Would love to hear your advice or anecdotal stories of people with law degrees who were able to retire a lot earlier than 65 (and who actually used their law degree to do so).
Thanks!
Comments
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Friend of a friends dad is a lawyer and he retired when he is 40. He owned his own law firm
My other friend is doing software engineering but living off his car in SF. Hes mid 20s, makes abour 150k and saving nearly all of his income to retire early. After couple years of working he has close to 200k in savings.
If you're looking to make big money easily, law probably isn't the best career to pursue. You will work long, hard hours and sacrifice a lot for the money you make, especially in Big Law. Also, most people won't make partner, so hoping for those lucrative positions may leave one more likely to end up disappointed.
But then again, anyone that tries to tell you you can make a ton of money easily in any field is probably lying to you. Lawyers, doctors, engineers, investment bankers, businessmen, etc. - they all work very hard. The best idea is probably to find something you enjoy doing.
I believe the turnover rate at big firms for those not on partner track is a lot shorter than 14 years. 7-8 years maximum for newly minted lawyers is what I heard.
Anyhow, accumulating quick, independent wealth by age 40 through a legal career is not entirely impossible. You know those cases where the jury awards the plaintiff an outrageous amount of damages (e.g. over one million dollars)? Net about at least 30 of those clients on contingency fee arrangements, win all cases, make sure each client collects every single penny from the other party or parties, and obtain your rightful shares; you should be good to go.
If the goal is to sacrafice your youth to get an early retirement, I would recommend simply trying to get a full ride(or close to it at a Top 14) living cheap while in law school and not changing that when you get to law school.
Then I would go into Big Law in somewhere that is not New York or Chicago(but wherever you have ties). Live as cheap as you can in this place and invest your savings in a well diversified stock plan. Continue doing this for some time. You will probably be much more likely to make partner at this smaller firm. I assume it is possible for that to be very lucrative. Live like it isn't if you make it.
Then when you have enough savings to live off the inflation adjusted growth, do it.
If I do Big Law at all it will be with a similar, but less draconian and long term plan in mind. I will try to save all I can at the start of my career in Big Law and then when I have enough that it will grow to the point where I could one day retire, I will switch jobs(I will only have 6 or 7 years of this as a maximum and more likely about 3 because I have little interest in the financial investment in a firm that comes with being a partner so if I ended up riding the Big Law train that far it would be time to leave). Then I will get out of Big Law and start doing what I want to do(likely some sort of public interest law), but will live on the money I take in and not touch the Big Law savings until retirement. This softer version will let me start doing what I want to do for the rest of my career by the time I am about thirty and retire.
My alternative is to just do the type of work I want from the start. Maybe the world will end before I retire.
Not that retiring early is inherently bad but why dont you want to find a job that you want to do as long as possible? There is a reason why many become depressed after retiring. Having work or projects gives you a sense purpose but its definitely not the only way to get that purpose. What do you plan to do with early retirement? Travel the world and volunteer for huminatarian causes?
To be honest, if you want an early retirement, you either should get into a T14 full ride or learn to make money online. Learn affiliate marketing, sales funnels, and social media marketing. If you are smart about it, you can make a couple grand a month, perhaps more. Also you should invest into property. Even if you have substantial savings, you should have some form of passive income
There are so, so many things a person could do in this world. To be in your twenties and to look forward as if none of them could hold your interest for 18 years is pretty sad to think about.
Echoing a question upthread: why do you want to retire so early versus finding a job that you love? Opportunities open when you have time and money (which a wonderful retirement would have), but a sense of purpose and an ability to spend your days doing something that you can look back on and know you believed in seems like it would provide a better quality of life for longer.
You never know what will happen. You could get hit by a bus (god forbid) at age 39, and then you'd never reap the benefits of your decades-long sacrifice. Why not just try to find a direction that you enjoy more?
I live in a really affluent area and idk anyone who retired that early aside from people who are essentially homeless (living in an RV). I don’t know anyone who is that age and actually wants to retire entirely. Most of the attorneys I know are go getters who work 24/7 even into old age. Even if you start making big money you’ll likely want a nice lifestyle to match your income and you’ll want to continue increasing your income, not just call it quits at a young age.
That’s 40 years of your life retired to do what? You’d lose your mind.
I don’t think there’s any one career that is going to make it such that you live a well-off life living off savings for 40 years. I really doubt you want to live in an RV and eat beans out of a can for the second half of your life just bc you don’t want to work. Or do so the first half of your life just to save money.
You’d have to invest money in the stock market or something and that’s not a sure thing.
Big dreams lol honestly this isn’t a good reason to be an attorney/do anything and I hope you have other reasons to do so.
I'm not the OP, but I would be happy with living in a RV(or maybe a tiny house) and eating beans(one of my favorite foods) for the rest of my life so I'm not judging that.
I'd still want to do something with my time not in said RV or tiny house though(like maybe be a lawyer). If the OP has some other dream for what to do with his spare time, I would understnad that too. It might be a good idea to just do that right away. But if he wanted financial security I could see doing Big Law for as long as he could and then an In House job fir a while longer while saving aggressively before switching to some other career. What confuses me is the idea that this other career wouldn't make any money at all.
OP wanting to retire at 40 sounds like they dont want to work at all after 40 which means 0 income aside from investments. I dont get the point of aggressively working an intense job and saving for years just to do nothing and be forced to live a completely different lifestyle than one was able to afford while working. It's not feasible to work for a few years and then completely stop working at 40 unless you have a lot of investments. Again, I rarely hear of people "retiring" at 40 aside from people who arent able to find a job and are forced to roam around parking lots living in their car/rv. If that's the plan then you dont need to work as an attorney to get there. Not sure what you liking beans and rvs has to do with this. I could have said trucks and hot dogs, not the point of my comment.
To each their own, I just can’t imagine planning my retirement when I was 22 haha. You have a dream i guess though so, good for you.
I have a relative who is not 40 yet and know another person who is mid-40s and both are semi-retired. Both are entrepreneurs who built companies that they sold to larger corporations. Both have investment properties as well. So I guess that’s all a thing? Haha.
At best, you could finish law school at 25 and have 15 years to build savings. BigLaw is of course the most lucrative but I hope you would be prepared to work unbelievable hours in a high stress, high pressure environment. As mentioned above, probably BigLaw in a market with cheaper cost of living would be the most financially profitable. I don’t know much about the whole partner track thing (no desire to do BigLaw myself), but I’m not sure you’d actually want to become a partner if you want to retire at 40 since you would have to buy in. You’ll probably want to be investing all your extra cash into retirement accounts, not saving it up and putting into the firm.
In-house would also not be a bad track to be on. Smaller salary but still well paid, no expectations of a buy in and likely somewhat better hours, depending on the company.
My point is that there are plenty of people who don't care about the lifestyle that they would be able to afford in Big Law. I'm one of them. I assume the OP is another. Such people might be willing to live cheaply well surrounded by people burning through their money in exchange for the freedom of retiring early in life in the case of the OP or in my case for the freedom of doing the job I would like for the rest of my life. I have met people who have retired young maybe more at 45 or 50 than 40 to do what they love(often travelling). I don't think we need to be so condescending towards that especially since attending a Top 14 with a full or close to full scholarship and then living cheaply while in Big Law seems like a fairly good way to obtain it at relatively low risk compared to most professions.
For all I know, the OP might be planning to devote his life to writing a magnum opus after retiring. Whatever he plans to do after the age of 40 is irrelevant; it is none of my business. He is wondering whether it would be possible to accumulate a reasonable sum of fortune for his end by working in the legal field. All we have to do is answer that question.
What? I’m not being condescending by being realistic that it’s not feasible to think that you can live 40 years on 0 salary just from a few years of working as an attorney. Sorry for having a concept of money. People who have experienced poverty don’t wish to live in poverty. Again, if your goal is to live at the poverty line for 40 years of your life, you don’t need to go to law school to get there. I’m not on here assuming OP has some Into the Wild fantasies, sorry for making the “condescending” assumption that this person doesn’t want to work Big Law, be a partner, and then shortly run out of money and not be able to live comfortably. I also like beans and RVs not sure how I triggered you here.
I would say the odds seem stacked against you there. If it were even remotely easy to do, we'd see a lot more folks retired at 40. Frankly, I have never seen one. And I know rocket scientists and major entrepreneurs, officers in large companies, people in financial jobs, etc. The closest I have ever seen was a guy who sold his house and had savings, bought a cheaper place in a much cheaper state, and he spent a few years and enjoyed a small partial retirement and some various odd jobs before he went back to a career. I'm assuming that you mean retirement as in "If I don't want to work, I don't ever have to again". Short of lottery winnings, some very, very good luck, or being the very best in your field and working your butt off, I would say that perhaps having some back up plans would be a good idea. (For the record, back up plans are always a good idea. Everyone should have one).
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
Great website on early retirement and general life philosophy.
In any case, there are way easier ways to make money than the law. I think something in tech or finance is a much easier route. The earnings are similar or superior, and you don't have to go through 3 years of debt and forgone wages.
4 hour work week is a book you should read