They're not really pyramids though. If you're a baseball player, you either make a lot of money by most people's standards, albeit for a possibly short career, or you basically don't make much at all, even if you can play in the minors.

Law isn't quite so stark. You don't have to be at a white shoe firm to do OK (corporate counsel, prosperous practice in a smaller city) but a lot of lawyers certainly make pretty modest salaries.

It's still a pyramid. There are a few people at the top. There is the next layer of the people who make a decent living, aka the "middle class" actors, the folks making MLB minimum wage ($600K/yr), etc. and then all the people in the bottom layer trying to break in (the starving actors, the minor league players, etc).

And lawyers are very bimodal. You have a ton of lawyers who make less than <$90K/yr, and then a whole bunch making >$200K/yr, and not a lot in between.

Maybe. I don't dispute that law is bimodal but I also am pretty sure there are a fair number of corporate counsels and partners at smaller practices earning comfortable low six figure salaries out there.

Exactly. The middle ones are all government attorneys who exchange earning potential for stability and more humane hours.

I remember reading, some years ago, about how lawyers who couldn't find work would be stuck doing document review, and they would rant on the internet about how mind-numbing, low-paid, and degrading it was. But they'd be stuck, because it was the only option to pay off student loans.

I assume at some point the job was mostly offshored? It's one of those things that I wonder if people overseas would do a better job even at the same price, if they saw it as a great job, as opposed to Americans who see it as a badge of failure.

A lot of rote legal work was also automated as I understand it.

Historically, law schools were also something that folks from even elite liberal arts colleges went to because they weren't sure what they wanted to do when they "grew up." I know a lot of folks with law degrees that maybe worked as associates for a few years but ended off going and doing something else related to politics or whatever.

Are the two modes partner/partner-track and everyone else? I'm not very familiar with it.

It's "graduated from a top 20 school" vs everyone else. Maybe even top 10.

A bit of an exaggeration but it's went to a top 10 school, clerked at the Supreme Court or at least US Court of Appeals, made partner at a white shoe firm, and everyone else.