Susan,
Your advice is good. Let me augment it a bit.

I would add to your excellent advice:

Go to as many bar association lunches as you an. Sit at tables where there ae lawyers. Listen to them talk. Learn from their talk what they do. Introduce yourself as a student and say you want to learn more about being a lawyer. They will tell you a lot more than you thought to ask about. Ask them the question:
“If you had it to do all over again, would you have gone to law school?” Their answers will give you an excellent series of answers to your questions.

Anyone considering law school should ask themselves”
“Do I want to go to law school just to go to law school? Or do I want to go to law school to become a lawyer?”

People have varied reasons for going to law school other than to become a practicing lawyer. Some of the more common ones are:
Delaying earning a living for 3 or 4 years
Delaying a marital or child bearing situation
Delaying military service
Trust fund money continues so long as an erolled student
Easier than having to learn “stuff” like accounting or mathematics or science.
Looks like the fast track to big bucks based on what lawyers do and their life styles on TV and in the movies.
Being ignorant of what a business is, they think law is a money grabbing business, not a profession.
Totally misguided belief in what lawyers earn based on the press releases of the largest firms and those who indicate they can get you that kind of money.

Most of the unhappy lawyers whom I meet are people who never should have gone to law school to begin with.

As you point out, they knew little to nothing about what it means to be a lawyer before starting law school.

I lectured for many years at Campbell University Law School in North Carolina as part of the “North Carolina Start Your Own Law Firm” curricula.
Their graduates are economically and professionally successful, going to places where they have no family or contact.. They get job offers from all over the southeast.

They cannot get admitted to the law school unless they can demonstrate that they know what it means to be a practicing lawyer. They must take Law Practice Management to graduate. Their text is my book and the program is (or was) a huge success. They do well because they can hit the deck running in solo practice or in a firm.

The key is that the school only accepts people who want to be lawyers and who know something about being a lawyer.

“If you do what you love, you’ll love what you’re doing.”

Best Jay

Jay Foonberg
Attorney, CPA, CLE Presenter, Author,
Fellow – American College of Law Practice Management,
4-Time ABA Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient
How to Start and Build a Law Practice, 5th ed.
How to Get and Keep Good Clients, 3rd ed.
ABA Guide to Lawyer Trust Accounts
How to Draft Bills Clients Rush to Pay, 2nd ed.
Finding the Right Lawyer
Getting Paid in Good Times and Bad (June 2009)
http://www.FoonbergLaw.com

First, using the average income is pretty useless in law. There will be a few PI attorneys taking home seven figure contingency fees and will completely screw up the average. What you need is the median figure.

But, more importantly, this data doesn’t at all distinguish among the different kinds of solo practices. There’s a huge difference between someone leaving their mid-law shop 15 years into practice and opening up their own firm with the resources to get a nice office, hire a secretary and a paralegal, pay for marketing, and take a big enough book of business with them to be making money on day 1.

On the other end, you have recent graduates with no experience, virtually no practical skills, few contacts, and not enough money to even drive themselves to Starbuck’s for a client meeting.