USC Gould in top 10 in alumni salaries

Mid-career salaries 6th among law schools

By Lori Craig

USC Gould graduates are earning some of the highest salaries when compared with other law school graduates, based on a ranking recently released by Forbes.

The median mid-career salary for USC Gould alumni is $192,800, which ranks sixth in salaries of graduates from 97 law schools around the country and is the highest in Southern California, pointing to the strength of USC's alumni base in the Los Angeles area. Recent USC Gould grads are earning a starting salary of about $145,000 which ranks 13th, according to Forbes.

The lists, which include the top 25 schools for starting and mid-career graduate salaries, were created based on information reported by law schools and on the salary listing website Payscale.

Salary details from 29,800 law school graduates of 97 schools were used to examine which schools’ alumni are earning the highest mid-career incomes.

Although past surveys have looked at private sector salaries only, the current survey includes lawyers working in all occupations. Mid-career salaries were obtained from law school graduates with at least 10 years of work experience, and a median of 15 years since graduation.

The top 10 schools for mid-career salaries among those on the Forbes list:

 1.  Stanford Law School
 2.  Northwestern University School of Law
 3.  Duke University School of Law
 4.  Harvard Law School
 5.  University of Michigan Law School
 6.  USC Gould School of Law
 7.  Santa Clara University School of Law
 8.  University of California at Los Angeles School of Law
 9.  Georgetown University Law School
10. Cornell University Law School