Above the Law shares a very interesting tidbit from a recent PLI Law Firm Leadership and Management Institute presentation by Dean David Van Zandt of Northwestern University School of Law.

[W]hat salary would you have to earn upon graduation in order to make going to law school an economically rational decision? Van Zandt and some of his Northwestern colleagues did a study to determine the added value of a J.D. degree. They concluded that the break-even starting salary for a law school graduate is $65,000. Put another way, going to a law school with a median salary upon graduation that’s below $65,000 is not a wise investment.

Above the Law thinks that's too low, but the number actually sounds right to me. I took on just about as much debt as a person can in order to attend a Tier 1 school, paying out-of-state tuition. $65,000 a year would indeed be enough to cover my various expenses, including the stock repayment plan on those student loans. It wouldn't leave very much room for anything else; at the very least, it'd be difficult to amass much wealth at that pace. But the goal is not getting rich; it's breaking even.

This would probably not be enough if you were carrying a higher tuition-driven debt, say from attending a ridiculously expensive private school. Nor would you be breaking even if you were working in an expensive market, such as New York City. Of course, if you take a $65k/year job in NYC, you're just not playing the game very well to begin with.