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Total cost is 100K per year x 3 years. This includes hostel and living costs and travel allowance. Interest rates are near zero. You also get tax breaks when you repay. Even if you take full 300K loan, you can pay it back in 3 years. 2 years of bonus is good. 200K is base salary only, doesn’t include bonus.
It’s very easy to repay. The reason some people aren’t able to repay is because they didn’t go to law school or Med school so didn’t get highly paid jobs. Or because of irresponsible financial decisions like buying luxury cars and mansions, travelling first / business class.
The above link talks about law students! Padh toe le pehle - very easy to pay!!! Tu de de phir.
Too many assumptions. Not everyone who gets a degree in law or medicine would go on to earn 200K.

Please understand this.
Davis Polk has increased it further to 205K for freshers. Firms in UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, India, Singapore, HK, Middle East don’t even pay half of this to their first years.
MC firms have also raised their NQ salaries, and are set to increase it even further.
Taxes in places like NYC are insane, cumulatively foreign firms pay a lot
London tax is 50% NY is 45% Toronto 50% Sydney / Melbourne are 45% how exactly is NYC insane? And US firms pay same everywhere, other US cities taxes are lower
On a PPP basis, 100000 USD is approx 20 lakhs. Moreover, cost of law school is higher, and it is after paying for undergrad. So after 7 years of (expensive) education, being paid 200000 if you are from a T-13 or at the top is not too different or better.

But yeah, given inflation, if law firms had increased at a consistent 10% over the last decade, fresher salaries at Tier ones would have hit the 30 LPA mark and I hope tier ones (and other firms) start increasing their retainer.

Also keep in mind that in the US, lawyers are paying an effective 30% tax rate while most A0s (the comparative) pay negligible taxes in India. So we are PPP+Tax combined at an 130K USD pay already.
Harvard - cost of attendance - $104,200 per 9-months - therefore, $312,600 (over 3 such periods)
Thereafter, you may get $200,000 an year.
Also, do note that the average age of an incoming class there is much higher. Everyone must have a 4-year under-grad to boot. Most have some work experience. The debts from these also add up with the law school cost which BTW does not include the 2 summer co-ops you will do at the very least, 3 in most cases.
https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/sfs/financial-aid-policy-overview/student-financial-aid-budget/

Also, before you go at me for providing the 'most expensive' comparative, let me note that Harvard only barely enters the top-10 in tuition fee comparison in the US. Columbia University, New York University, Cornell University, University of Chicago, University of Southern California (Gould), Northwestern University (Pritzker), University of Virginia, University of Pennsylvania (Carey), and Yale University all have higher tuition fee component. The cost of living for each may vary.
Time to stop waiting for foreign law firm entry,time to start packing and move to foreign land to join foreign law firms The Tier1s are never going to let go of their power and positions by allowing foreign law firms entry.
An average

Janitor/Cleaner makes Rs. 3 lakhs per month in USA.
In India? = Less than 10'000 per month.

200K = 1.4 crore for an AO in USA.

AO in India? = 14 lakhs.

(10 times more in USA, while for other professionals it is 30 times more in USA)
India and USA have completely different economies.

According to PPP basis.

An average Indian Law Firm must not pay more than 6 lakh per annum. If we use a Pay Parity Model.

The figures show that Indian Firms are over paying thier lawyers.

Sad to see such entitled posts.
Or maybe India cannot really afford to pay its janitors, who enjoy a standard of living far lower than their US counterparts.
You can check this: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=India&city1=New+York%2C+NY&city2=Mumbai&tracking=getDispatchComparison

Cost in NY v Mumbai is 4x. First years in NY now getting - 205k + 10k bonus = 215k. At a conversion rate of 73.23 it’s 157.45 lakhs. So first years in Mumbai should be paid 157.45/4 = 39.36 lakhs.
Hey, I think NY v. Mumbai is a fair conversion (roughly financial hubs + most expensive Cost of Living). On 200k, if you are being taxed at 30%, that takes 60k out of the window. Remaining is 140k.
As some one above had mentioned, cost of law school is approx 100k per year which is 300k (including living expenses I presume). Let us exclude undergrad from this.
In India, your law school fees is roughly 2 LPA(including hostel etc). Assuming you have expenses of a lakh a year, that is 15 Lakhs for the overall program. One year A0 salary at a tier 1 is roughly the same as cost of law school, unlike in the US. (Not saying you can pay off cost of law school in a year, only equating the numbers).
So in that sense these are pretty similar.
What is problematic is how there are few cities in India where you have transactional law offices. Like outside of Delhi Mumbai and Bangalore, no city has tier 1s in any real terms. Kco Chennai, Back office in Pune, token presence in Gift City are all negligible. Now those are markets where once firms go and set up offices, a 'national' comparison with the US makes sense.
I am joining as an A0 so I would be happy if my firm pays me 30 or 40 LPA instead of my 15. But I think it is incorrect to say that the US is paying much more than we get paid. On my 15, I am barely paying any taxes, so it corresponds to a 100K USD on PPP terms. That 30K is more than offset by how cheap education in India is (remember, you have to count undergrad degree expenses in the US as well).
And if you are a grad of CLC or something and make it to a tier 1, your first year retainer is multiples of your law school expenses, which no one in the US can claim even at the cheaper but good law schools there.
Loved how you built a purchasing power parity model by pulling some numbers out of thin air.

Here's something more credible. World Bank's PPP conversion table for 2019 is available at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.PPP

The base currency is USD, and the conversion factor for India is 21.28. Ergo, 200,000 x 21.28 = 42,56,000 INR.

An average Indian Law Firm must not pay less than 42 lakh per annum if we use a Pay Parity Model.

The figures show that Indian Firms are grossly underpaying thier lawyers.

Sad to see such ignorant posts.
Your calculation is totally wrong! You don't apply a PPP multiple to the USD number straight! You first compute the INR equivalent of the USD number and then multiply that INR number by the PPP number. The answer you get, you then DIVIDE that number by the PPP multiple to arrive at the comparable pay in India.

Therefore, the correct computation would be as follows:

USD 200,000 = 200,000 Γ— 73 = INR 1.46 crores.

Adjusting that amount now for PPP = 1.46 crores Γ· 21.28 = INR 6.86 lakhs.

So, 6.86 lakhs per annum is the comparable Indian pay for a USD 200,000 per annum pay in the US.

Most Indian law firms pay better than that.
No, it is not. The way I have calculated it is correct. Here's an online tool to find it out yourself: http://salaryconverter.nigelb.me/

Read more about it here: https://www.wallstreetmojo.com/purchasing-power-parity-formula/

At law school, an economics professor used to emphasise how important it is for lawyers to know the basics of finance and economics. Never really thought much about it then, but I guess she was right afterall.
Am sorry, but you are still totally wrong. The very link that you have cited with authority (see Example 2) computes it exactly the way I have - only diff is that in that example, they have the two cost numbers and are computing the PPP multiple, whereas here, we have the PPP multiple (cited by you) and are computing one of the comparable market numbers, but it's the same formula, really.

The concept, though, is simple - India is 21.28 times less expensive than the US, so the INR can buy 21.28 times more of the same product or service than the USD can. If we apply this concept here, whatever of the same good or service that USD 200,000 can buy you in the US can be bought in India with a much smaller amount - INR 1.46 Crores (being USD 200,000 converted into INR at exchange rate of 73) divided by 21.28, which is equal to INR 6.86 lakhs.
According to you:

Price of a starbucks coffee in India = Rs. 350 or $5
Price of a starbucks coffee in USA = $5 x 21.28 = $105

Price of the iphone 12 mini in India = Rs. 73,000 or $1,000
Price of the iphone 12 mini in USA = $1000 x 21.28 = $21,280

Stop embarrassing yourself
You are again totally wrong.

What you have tried to impute to me is not at all what I said. What I said is fairly clear in my messages above. You should read them and try to comprehend.
Babe, you just compared the prices of US products in US and India and pretended to prove his calculation of price parity wrong.

What you should have compared:

Normal price of coffee in India: Rs. 20 or 20 cents approx.
Normal price of coffee in US: $4 = Rs. 300 (roughly 15 times more)
I see all tier 1 lawyers with their starbucks and iphones. Don't know where you get Rs. 20 cold coffee. 1 cig comes for Rs. 20
Yes, let's look at the example that I've cited. It states as follows:

PPP Formula = Cost of good X in currency A / Cost of good X in currency B

In this case, good X is legal services provided by an A0, currency A is INR and currency B is USD. We already know from the World Bank data that 'PPP Formula' is 21.28. Filling in the blanks, we get:

21.28 = / 200000 USD

Cross Multiplying, we get:

INR Equivalent = 200000 x 21.28 = 42.56 lakh

I'm sorry you are finding this so difficult to understand, I (and the ample online resource) have tried to do my best to help you out.

[A request to the LI mods: Can you please mark comments 6, 6.3.2 and 6.3.2.A.1 as facts contested, or at least add a disclaimer of some sort that the application of the concept of PPP is incorrect? Don't want more people to start doubting their own clarity about these concepts]
So what you're trying to say is that the actual conversion rate of INR to USD is 75 but that the PPP conversion rate is 3 (Reached at this conclusion by dividing the INR 6.86 lakh by USD 200k)? Do you understand that that means that what costs USD 1 in the USA will cost INR 3.5 in India? An iPhone 12 costs USD 900 in the States, and going by your PPP conversion, it should cost INR 3,150 in India. Does it?

Seriously, stop embarrassing yourself. Read up a bit about PPP, Big Mac Index, etc. and have the humility to accept that you're wrong.
Comment 6.3.2.A.1.c (Guest) is the reason why reading comprehension is tested in competitive exams. Sometimes, people really cannot read and understand the text that is right in front of them.

To put simply for everyone who has gotten confused by now thanks to these gentlemen:

1 USD = 73 INR (actual currency conversion)
But in reality, 73 INR can buy you more in India than what 1 USD can buy you in America.
That is why you have PPP. Adjusting for PPP: 1 USD = 21.28 INR.
So, like you can get a glass of juice in Delhi for 60 INR from roadside juice stalls, you can get a glass of juice at approx 3-4 USD from a roadside cart in the US.

Furthermore, kindly refrain from comparing prices of iPhone/Starbucks as these brands deliberately maintain similar prices across countries to maintain consistency and cross-subsidize revenues and profits. Further, the parts/accessories that electronic products are made from are rarely indigenous. So when you import the processor from US, battery from Japan and display screen from South Korea - you cannot calculate the PPP of the final product based on selling price in India.

The most accurate measure of PPP are products and services which are indigenous - like the cost of chai, coffee, groceries, a haircut, public transport etc.
Fair question. I want to be paid an equitable amount. If I bill x amount per hour, amounting to a total of xyz amount per year, I want to be paid a reasonable amount of the money I bring in. Feel free to deduct overheads, a sizeable chunk for the partner's Mercedes EMI, etc etc. An A1 bills at roughly 225 usd per hour, let's generously round it down to 200 and let's cut out all the extra hours, wasted hours etc. From experience, I can safely say it's around 20-22 hours a week billed to the client (at the full rate). That's 3.2 lakhs a week. Nearly 13 lakhs a month, and after slashing of hours for rationalising, somewhere around 8 lakhs. I get paid 1.5 lakhs per month at my A4 level. Reasonably that should be closer to 3.5 lakhs per month, cutting out everything else mentioned above. Basically, a week's pay.
To anybody who thinks lawyers in Indian law firms are adequately paid/ overpaid : we can't afford our own houses in cities like Delhi and Mumbai and have to pay heavy rent for shit houses. Remember the traditional requirements for people? Roti, kapda aur makaan?
The traditional requirement ke anusaar tumhaare maa-baap ka ghar hai na? Jao raho unke saath joint family mein. That is Indian traditional thing. If you wish to move cities for your career - as you should - there is no expectation that you will make a house for yourself in the first fifteen to twenty years. Yeh pichli generation ke liye bhi tha, and tumhaari inflated salaries ke bawajood tumhaare liye bhi hai.
Ok booms. My bad, I had assumed that the economy had liberalized in 91 and I couldn't compare my generation with my parents', when it came to the job market.
Roti, kapda aur makaan waala Boomer requirement tu add kar convo mein, but somehow Boomer main? Yeh toe bilkul Gen-Z waala logic hai.
PA here from tier 1 in Delhi. Still cannot afford a house in Delhi. Will have to find one in Noida probably and travel hours every day. Based on numbers quoted elsewhere, just pure numbers, A0s in American law firms are making more than what people with 13-14 yrs of experience in a tier 1 would be making.
I doubt an A0 can buy a place in Manhattan either. Tu le ghar Noida mein aur metro lekar aa. Otherwise, yeh Boomer logic of 'makaan' chod and rent par maze see reh.
How much are you paid every month by your tier 1?? I know people who earn that much in an year, many years older to you, who buy comfy houses in Delhi.
If you meant that you wanted to buy the house by a full purchase, maybe you wont be able to, but cant you afford a monthly emi?
What are the prospects after doing LLM? Would it make sense for a SA in a top tier law firm in India (making around 50 lakhs pa) opting for a fresher job in US?
As someone who was an SA, did an LLM and is now a mid-level associate in big law in NYC, I may have some practical advice for you. Getting an NYC big law job post-LLM is a crap shoot. In my Ivy league law school, of the ~20 Indians, 3 got full time positions in NYC. For the rest of the LLM cohort (non-Indians), most got 1 year International Associate positions and had to leave after completing a year at the firm. Separately, being a first year and having to prove yourself doing grunt work again isn't fun.

BUUUT, on the flip side, while the hours are probably similar if not worse, the work culture and sense of openness is worth it to me. I can choose my own transactions, I'm treated like an adult. My standard of living and ability to express myself without fear of rebuke is way higher. In general, this salary puts you at or near the 1%, which means that most Manhattan activities are well within your financial reach - in a way that wasn't true of Bombay as a first-year, like having your own 1 BR well located apartment and being able to go out often to nice bars in the city without balking at the bill.

If living in India is stifling for you (hierarchical work culture, lack of independence, conservative socio-cultural norms) and if you're able to assimilate into new cultures well, I would highly recommend it.
It's quite disheartening to see these kind of posts.

As others have pointed out, the cost of living and of education to get these kind of payments in the US is far higher than in India.

Someone else has made the claim that the salary being paid is not enough to afford own houses in major cities like Mumbai and Delhi. I think this is also not true or even appropriate. I think what they meant to say was, that the salary being paid is not enough to afford a house of the quality and size that everyone thinks they deserve. Plenty of people still buy houses, it's just that these are small houses in the outskirts. If you are telling me that someone at about 6-8 years PQE in a Tier 1 firm making roughly about 35-50+ LPA (including bonuses) is not able to afford a house, then you are having a laugh.

Last, compared to engineers and other working clause white collared professionals (not including doctors which is a whole different ballgame) - corporate lawyer's salary is substantially high especially if you end up anywhere in Tier 1 / 2.

Ex - When I graduated my best friend (who had graduated a year earlier from an unknown engineering college) had a then 1 year PQE salary of 3.2 Lakhs. Per. Annum. In comparison, my monthly take home was >1 Lakh. Look at the disparity! And this hasn't changed in the time I graduated (better part of a decade or so).

My two cents on sentiments as set out in this post (and some comments) is this. It's not bad to want more money or to be ambitious about it - but to want an automatic increase for no reason other than because somebody else got it reflects a level of avarice which is worrisome. Clearly the market values corporate lawyers well and we are paid to reflect that value, if it has to increase, the overall environment in India has to increase so that more people are willing to pay greater amounts. Otherwise it's just a recipe for another fresher death from overworking.
What do you mean docs are a different ballgame? Corp lawyers are still payed the best initially compared to all sectors
I have no visibility on how much doctors make but I was given to understand that they make a reasonable sum - which I suppose given their extensive education + training means something. Hence the carve out.
Exactly, FMW! That was your friend from an unknown engineering college. Now, even being a BYJUS sale rep graduating from SRM earns 10 LPA. If you can compare NLUs to NITs/IITs, then even students with 6/10 CGPA there earn a 12 LPA packages. I won't even get into the top 10% offers which range between 24 lacs to 1.2 crores.

The point with law firm salaries is not just whether they are low or high. It is simply that they have stagnated for TOO long now. Take a look at the 2012 salary figures in this link: https://www.legallyindia.com/law-firms/law-firm-salaries-2016-00011130-8145

It has been 9-10 years now and salary figures are still in the same range. Even accounting for basic inflation of average 5%, the salaries should be 60% more. So, forget about standard increment of 6-10% every year. Real Income has been reducing since 10 years!! It was better to be a corporate lawyer in 2012 than it is to be now - even though the business and billables have increased consistently for law firms.
This wage slave mentality will be our collective damnation. Our demand for pay raises shouldn't be based on comparative infighting. Just pay us a reasonable portion of the money we make ffs. We're making far FAR more money for law firms on an hourly basis that we were in 2013-15 when pay was last reasonably raised. Some law firms are billing at nearly 100-150 usd more per hour than they were at that time. Yet pay has remained the exact same. This is the reason I'm demanding better pay, not because someone in Cravath is getting 200k a year.
I’m 100% with this sentiment actually. Lawyers definitely deserve to get paid more as a portion of the profits the firms make.

FWIW - if it doesn’t work for you, quit and start out on your own. Risk = Reward. Indian law firms have no reason to increase salary unless they see their resources dwindling. In the US they HAVE TO because there is that much competition. In India - not so much. Captive market means no reason to be competitive.

The law firms will of course claim that they are taking a chance on a fresher, training them etc. so they should get keep a large part of the profit made for the risk being undertaken.

In any case, I stepped out the Tier 1 slavery business a while ago and it has served me very very well indeed. So all I can say is that take your chances if you think you deserve more.
Built a practice independently - initial compensation was quite a bit lower, current compensation is market standard but my life is signficiantly better and compensation is only going to go up now.
Summary of discussions ongoing at different threads right now : lawyers at law firms want base pay to be increased across levels as it's been considerable number of years since that happened and law firm career is probably not as lucrative as back in 2010-11.

Coming to what's stopping law firms. Can't think of anything other than a collective understanding not to do it. As soon as one firm increases pay, other firms will have to increase as well if they want to retain talent. That's what has historically happened. firms often struggle with attrition but still haven't revised pay, which is the easiest short term fix to hold back talent. That's a clear indication of the fact that law firms in India have an implied understanding not to raise pay/ not to indulge in pay wars. Lack of competition is leading to stagnation. Also why non-entry of law firms is also not helping.
The issue is also the opaqueness of pay across levels after you are PQE1, even internally at Indian firms. If you take US firms, their pay bands up to 7-8 yrs of experience is standard and available to all internally and also available in public as well, if you know where to look.

What's stopping a firm like Trilegal (taking this example as it is possibly the least lala like and I haven't worked at Trilegal) to make its pay numbers/ range up till 8 yrs of experience public. It will help attract talent if it's higher than other firms and will also force other firms to match. Lack of competition in Indian firms to attract talent has greatly affected the quantum of retainer fees.
Hope all of you have sent out your DDR report before landing up here. Not cool of you say some other work had come up and you were here!
Taking inflation into account, the new salaries should be as follows:

A0 - 20 (fixed) + 2 (bonus)
A1 - 22 + 3 = 25
A2 - 25 + 5 = 30
A3 - 28 + 7 = 35
SA1 - 31 + 9 = 40

PAs should earn 60 - 80, salaried partners should earn 100-150
No doubt lawyers in India should be paid fairly, but this comparison between two very different economies is erroneous. There are economies where cost of labour is high (read US) and there are economies where cost of capital is high (read India). Owning a firm is like owning capital. The way a depositor in US cannot take the argument that interest rates are too low, similarly someone putting in labour in India cannot claim parity with US.

If PPP was the only consideration, then there was no reason that an individual in US could not afford domestic helps, drivers, gardeners etc.in the US, as it would have been a case of merely multiplying each individual's income with the PPP multiple.
6.3.2.A.1.c.1!!!

Kian bhai, lock kar de. Yeh dono paagal ho jayenge.
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