What Are the Best Cities for Legal Jobs and Affordable Rent?

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Summary: Adobo ranked the best cities to live in for legal jobs.

When determining where to live, people consider several factors. These variables include how much does it cost to live there? What are my job prospects? What is the environment like?

  

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The rental app, Adobo, has conducted a study about cost and opportunity in the legal field, and it looked at the concentration of jobs in cities and then compared that to salaries and the cost of living. As part of the study, they included legal staff such as paralegals, court reporters, title examiners, and legal support workers as well as attorneys and judges.

Adobo’s study found that not surprisingly the most legal jobs were in Washington, D.C., followed by Philadelphia, and Miami, respectively. The highest salaries, on the other hand, were bestowed upon those working in the tech-heavy Silicon Valley. In that area, legal professionals made on average $134,00o to $142,000 a year.

After determining the cities with the most jobs in the legal field, Adobo then looked at the amount of rent most people paid. They then used a formula to create a score based on a weighted balance of median one-bedroom rent, median legal salary, and job density.

“We used 2015 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on employment per 1,000 jobs and median annual wages for all legal occupations by metropolitan statistical area and paired it with ABODO data on median 1-bedroom rent prices. To calculate the income-to-rent ratio for each MSA, we divided the median annual wages by 12 to get a median monthly wage, then divided the result by the current median 1-bedroom rent price for the area. We then scaled both the employment per 1,000 jobs and the income-to-rent ratio to give each a relative value between 0 and 10. The final score is a weighted sum of the scaled values, with employment per 1,000 jobs carrying a 75% weight and income-to-rent ratio 25%,” Adobo said about their methodology.

The top of Adobo’s list was the Washington D.C. area, where the median occupation salary is $134,000 and the median one bedroom apartment is $2,273.

In second place, Philadelphia had a ratio of 5.07 comparing its median wages of $83,000 to the amount of rent $1,367. The Detroit area had an even higher ratio with a median salary of $83,190 and an average one bedroom apartment rent of $525.

San Francisco, Miami, Newark, Oklahoma City, Richmond, Albuquerque, and Cleveland rounded out the top ten list. While their rents and salaries ranged widely, per one thousand people, there were almost 10 legal jobs available.

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What do you think of Adobo’s list? Let us know in the comments below.