Also, when going to law school, you miss 2-3 years of earning and saving power.  You miss 2-3 years of compounding interest.  Tax accountant for 2-3 years

yr 1: 55,000 salary (6,000 saved for retirment)

yr 2: 60,000 salary (7,000 saved for retirement)

yr 3: 65,000 salary (7,500 saved for retirement)

For simplicity sake, the market returns 10% a year less 3% for inflation. The future value of the 20,500 saved at 7%, for 40 years gives you about $307,000 adjusted roughly for inflation.

I am sure you can make a good living as either a lawyer or an accountant, but like someone else said, if you arent in the top part of your class at a top 14 law school, you mine as well not even go.

"About half the graduates of the top 14 law schools go directly to jobs at the nation’s top 250 law firms where starting pay can reach $160,000 a year. (Others at the elite schools go on to clerkships, and then to the big law firms.) But at Tier 1 schools below that level, only 19 percent got the coveted big-firm jobs. The percentage falls to 7 percent at Tier 2 schools.

These lower-tier grads may command much lower starting salaries of $40,000 to $55,000 a year. Yet their debt load can be high—an average of about $72,000 for graduates of Tier 1 schools and $77,000 for graduates of Tier 2 schools."

ABAjournal.com