If you graduate from a top-tier law school, then you can go the big law path with the goal of someday becoming a partner, or eventually breaking off and doing your own thing. These jobs provide the high salaries and prestige most often associated with the idealized view of what life as a lawyer is really like. The problem is that there are a lot of lower-tier law programs that crank out graduates who can't even find employment after graduation. They end up doing freelance and contract work, or end up doing paralegal-level work in a corporate job, and often earn less than many undergraduate majors. These same people are often stuck with huge student loans and no way to pay them back. There is a wide gap in law school graduate outcomes.