Despite news of record-breaking employment figures for law school graduates and first-year salaries of $160,000 at many top law firms, a significant contingent of job seekers -- including those with strong credentials -- are living a much different story after graduation.

By accounts from employment trackers, news reports and some law schools themselves, starting a lucrative career as a lawyer these days is easier than ever. Many big law firms are doling out first-year salaries that exceed those paid to seasoned federal judges, and they are bestowing year-end bonuses that rival starting pay for many entry-level professional positions.

But the eye-popping salaries are the reality for a small fraction of law school graduates, and all those stories of big money may be creating unrealistic hopes for the vast majority of law school students. Contributing to the situation is the effort by law schools to portray their employment numbers as robustly as possible to boost their ranking scores.

The upshot means dashed expectations for lots of graduates, many of whom are saddled with high debt as they struggle to start their careers.

"They do not have an accurate perception of the job market," said Emily Spieler, dean of Northeastern University School of Law. "They have very restricted views."

A big challenge -- and responsibility -- for law schools is to dispel the notion that six-figure salaries at megafirms are the norm, she said: "They perceive those jobs as having high status and high pay and do not understand what they entail."

According to the latest information from NALP, the Washington-based nonprofit group that tracks legal employment, 90.7 percent of last year's law school graduates were employed nine months after graduation, topping 90 percent for the first time since 2000. The total number of graduates for whom employment status was known equaled 40,186.

From that number 55.8 percent -- or 22,424 -- took jobs in private practice. NALP estimates that about 37 percent of graduates who go into private practice end up working for firms with 101 attorneys or more. Importantly, the vast majority of the firms paying first-year associates the much-publicized $160,000 have more than 500 attorneys.

The result is that about 80 percent of law graduates are not working in law firms with more than 101 attorneys and, consequently, are making far less than the amounts grabbing all the attention.

"I'm kind of stuck," said a 27-year-old lawyer from Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law who moved to Chicago after she graduated last year. She did not want to reveal her identity out of a concern that doing so would hinder her job search.

Currently working for an in-house department at a large insurance company in Chicago, she graduated in the top third of her class, was a member of law review and participated in the school's moot court competition. She has $70,000 in student loan debt, she said, and makes about $50,000 annually.

She sent out more than 100 résumés and letters before and after she graduated, she said: "I could get in the door; I just couldn't land the job."

She said that many of her friends from law school are working on a contract basis for law firms: "A lot of people are making $30,000."

She is looking for another job and is considering nonlawyer positions.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said.

While the challenges of landing that first job as a lawyer may not be any more difficult for law graduates than for graduates in other fields, the attention paid to the top lawyer jobs by the media, the law firms and the schools themselves can build false hopes about job prospects.

"I absolutely think their expectations are inflated," said James Leipold, executive director of NALP. Part of the problem lies in the interpretation of the numbers, Leipold explained. As of August 2006, the most recent data available from NALP, the median salary for first-year associates at law firms with 501 attorneys or more was $135,000. Since then, many big law firms have raised their starting pay to $160,000. For firms with two to 25 attorneys, the median salary was $67,000, according to NALP's latest information.

But job hunters should view those figures with caution, Leipold said. First, the majority of law school graduates obtain jobs at firms with 10 attorneys or fewer, he said. In addition, location makes a big difference in salaries. Most law school graduates across the country who take jobs in private practice can expect to make between $40,000 and $45,000 their first year, Leipold said.

According to NALP, 75.3 percent of graduates in 2006 had jobs for which passing the bar exam was required nine months after graduation. Leipold said he is confident that NALP's numbers are accurate.

"I have no reason to doubt our numbers," he said. "The data has been so consistent over 30 years. The market moves in decimal points."

FUDGE FACTOR

But he and many in academia take issue with the way U.S. News & World Report tracks employment information, which may be prompting schools to create an artificially bright employment picture. U.S. News publishes rankings each year of professional schools and graduate schools.

Critics say that not only does the publication's data fail to distinguish the types of jobs that constitute employment but fudging occurs in the "not seeking" category. Schools may too quickly label some graduates as "not seeking" work in order to remove them from the equation.

In addition, several sources interviewed said that they have known schools to hire their own graduates for short-term research assignments in order to boost employment numbers.

"It's amazing how there were schools at 70 percent [employment] a few years ago that are now at 90 percent," said Marcelyn Cox, assistant dean of career planning at University of Miami School of Law. "That's just impossible."

U.S. News changed its employment tracking methodology two years ago, according to Robert Morse, director of data research for the publication. Prior to 2006, it counted at-graduation numbers as 30 percent of the employment component and the nine-month numbers as 60 percent of the component. The publication, which has tweaked its methodology in several areas throughout the 17 years that it has ranked law schools, consistently maintains that it is open to input from its survey participants to improve its methodology.

Also contributing to the job-market disillusionment experienced by many law students is a lack of faith in the career services offices at their schools.

"I would say that it barely helped," said a student who graduated in 2006 from a private law school ranked in the top 60. He also requested anonymity because of his job search.

Now living in Philadelphia, he holds an undergraduate degree in business administration, was president of one student organization, was active in two other student groups and participated in moot court. He described career services at his law school as having a "very mechanical process" not particularly suited to his needs.

Students often view their career services offices as being there to help only the academic stars in their classes, a perception that, in most cases, is not true, said Deborah Schneider, former associate director for career development at University of California Hastings College of the Law. The co-author of "Should You Really Be a Lawyer?" (Niche Press, 2005), Schneider said many students experience "profound sticker shock" once they graduate and have to start repaying loans.

On-campus interviews contribute to the feeling of alienation from placement offices among many students, she said.

"For first-year law students, one of the first things that they see are these people running around in suits interviewing for high-paying large-firm jobs," she said.

According to NALP's latest figures, about 32 percent of full-time jobs at law firms result from on-campus interviews.

Schneider said that there "may be" some pressure for career services offices to devote a disproportionate share of their resources to the on-campus recruiting process, since students' placement at big firms affords them bragging rights and generates revenue for schools that charge law firms for access and space.

But she said that many students underestimate the dedication that placement offices have to a class as a whole. "You have that three-week thing that shapes perceptions that career services only cares about on-campus interviews," she said. "That's just not the case."

Students also have the misconception that most people have jobs lined up when they graduate and that only losers are still jobless as they begin studying for the bar exam, Schneider said.

"The vast majority of employers do not hire somebody a whole year before they need them," she said. "Most of the world doesn't operate like that."

One woman who graduated in the spring from the University of Oklahoma College of Law was not necessarily expecting to have a full-time job lined up at graduation, but she thought a law degree would make a bigger splash with potential employers.

She is about $70,000 in debt and is searching for a legal or nonlegal job. She has sent out "about a million résumés," said the woman, 24, who also asked to remain anonymous. Living with her parents in Tulsa, Okla., and studying for the Texas bar exam, she graduated with a B-minus grade-point average, had a clerkship at a small firm during her third year of law school and had an internship with another firm during her second year.

"I just didn't think it would be this hard," she said. "I think it's just a general misconception that with a law degree you're going to be in good shape."

The student living in Philadelphia said if he could undo his decisions, he would have obtained some professional experience -- his "first real job," he said -- instead of going straight from college to law school. That strategy might have made him more attractive to potential employers, he said.

"I don't get as welcome a response as I thought I would," he said.