As for $93k/yr being not bad for a 30-year old, you're right. But add in the average law school graduate's debt of $85k (which works out to $775/month for 15 years), along with the costs of supporting a family, mortgage, cars, etc... and it's not as nice a salary as you might think.
What is the appropriate compensation? Should it be based on number of years of training or the amount of money spent on the education?
Here are some numbers on college debts for graduate studies according to this article (
http://www.nelliemae.com/library/research_10.html):
“Students attending graduate school borrow, on average, an additional $31,700 beyond their undergraduate borrowing, an increase of 51% since 1997. The median debt level for graduate school borrowing is $23,700, an increase of 72% since 1997. Those borrowing for professional study, particularly law and medicine, drive up the average graduate level of borrowing. Law and medical student borrowers report an average accumulated debt from all years (undergraduate and graduate study) of $91,700 while the average combined debt for all graduate students is $45,900.”
If pay is based on the years of spent in education, a PHD graduate should receive the same pay as a lawyer, doctor or dentist. It may be true that a person with a PHD makes more than a person with a BS degree in the same field. However, a person with an MBA from a prestigious college will make a lot more than a person with a PHD. This suggests that the correlation between pay and level and education is low despite countless studies indicate the contrary. Pay or compensation is solely dependent on what the job market is willing to bear. It has nothing to do with how much money, efforts, or sacrifices one have to endure to get the job.
People will always complain that they are not receiving adequate pay commensurate with their experience or education. Doctors will say that they should deserve higher pay because of the years of training, the level of college debts incurred, the low pay during residency, the longs hours, time away from their families. That’s silly. If they ever thought that the compensation isn’t worth the time and effort, they would not have entered medical school or simply have discontinued the pursuit albeit some physicians are truly passionate about medicine and oblivious about the pay.
The bottom line is that pay is based on supply and demand. As long as society depends on the legal means or litigation to resolve conflicts as more complicated or conflicting laws are enacted, the demand for lawyers will continue to rise and therefore the compensation for the legal profession will accelerate accordingly. This is also true for all other professions that are in demand, i.e., doctors, dentists, money managers, top athletes, talented performing artists, gifted managers and so on.
