Most people who are in law school or even thinking about it, seem to have reasonable expectations about salary. At this point, i'd like to think that people know that lawyers can make anywhere from 40000-180000+ per year. But guess what - so can an engineer, or a plumber, or a stripper. There probably are some people that have unreasonable expectations about starting salary but that stands for any profession. I had a friend that thought being a real estate salesperson was going to lead to riches but later learned that after you pay association fees, errors and ommissions, marketing, and get dragged all over town by some client who decides to put the purchase on hold, finally learned the difference between "guaranteed pay" vs. "potential pay". By the way selling real estate is a much more cost effective way to learn this valuable lesson. He wasted about 3000 and 6 months instead of 3 years and 120000:)