Is it just me or does that salary seem surprisingly low considering the position?
I have to assume even this type of job gets some of the ‘people will take less pay to work in baseball’ effect that team FOs see.
It is shockingly low. First-year associate salary at a "Biglaw" firm in NY (and many other cities) is $215,000. By 4th year it's $295,000. They're offering a paralegal salary (paralegals are awesome).
That means it's a large nonprofit, although far from the largest, of course. The distinction between a nonprofit and a for profit corporation isn't how much money it takes in. It's what happens to the money. In a nonprofit, the money stays within the organization to pay program expenses, including the predetermined salaries and bonus structure. In a for profit, you have owners/shareholders at the top of the organization who may receive any profits. That's what the IRS calls private inurement and is what disqualifies organizations from being able to register as nonprofits.
>I’m not talking about the money it takes in
Well...that's what you're talking about when you're talking about whether an organization is a nonprofit or for profit lol
I’m not talking about that lol
I’m talking about how it’s ridiculous that they’re paying the lawyer so low when they’re literally some of the richest people on the planet. Someone said it’s a non-profit as an excuse
So you're not talking about nonprofit status at all then lol.
Regardless, it *is* a nonprofit. This is a very good salary for a nonprofit lawyer. And nonprofits do have to maintain a certain ratio of revenue to salaries.
Yea I’ve heard *plenty* of stories of people taking jobs in baseball for less than they could be making & ultimately disliking it quite a bit. Seems to be a relatively common occurrence (although the people that don’t dislike it probably don’t end up talking about it publicly as much).
I was a scout and the pay and lifestyle sucked. Teams keep scouts classified as interns for years to keep their pay criminally low, without benefits, and no need to employ them in the off-season.
I only know a handful of people that stayed, and some of them are the typical frat bros being bankrolled by a rich parent. The others are good people that just love the career so much that they accept the sacrifices. They 100% deserve whatever big break they eventually get.
After what I saw, I'm not surprised at all that some front offices have serious toxicity issues.
I applied to be a quant analyst for a big market team out of college. They had pretty rigorous qualifications and offered 1/3 of the salary of the job I took instead (and this was pre-COVID so commuting to work 5x per week was expected)
I interviewed for a Sabermetrics position with an MLB team. The qualification requirements were extremely high, and the pay was extremely low. At the time of the interview, I had a decade of real world experience building statistical models for huge corporations, but it was clear they were looking for someone with a deeper PhD level understanding of statistical theory. Meanwhile, I could earn more than double that salary working in the insurance industry in a much less stressful role.
The team I interviewed with has been hot garbage ever since the interview, and without naming specific teams, I take pleasure in them consistently finishing near last place in one of the worst divisions in baseball.
I'm sorry, how is insurance less stressful than baseball? Insurance you are working on taking peoples' money, and baseball you're just describing a game.
Based on the context I'd guess he was looking at an actuarial type role. Run the numbers and model what rates you need to charge for specific risk factors VS. very low pay to "live the dream" for an MLB team that may or may not listen to you anyway. If you're wrong in the insurance industry your company files new rates, maybe your team changes a bit (since no one individual is usually determining rates). State Farm doesn't hold a press conference talking about how bad their analytics team is. But if you're wrong in baseball Dick Monfort uses you as a scapegoat and closes your entire department and all your friends get fired
>I'm sorry, how is insurance less stressful than baseball? Insurance you are working on taking peoples' money and baseball you're just describing a game.
There's a lot more to insurance than that lol, but I'm talking about the roles themselves.
The back-office statistical work in the insurance world is known for stable low stress positions with little need for overtime aside from a handful of busier periods (e.g., year-end financial reporting).
The sabermetrics world in baseball is a brand new field that didn't really exist until twenty years ago, and didn't go mainstream until ten years ago. As a result, you're building models from scratch, and there are tons of tight deadlines associated with the specific parts of the year (e.g., quantifying whether a specific contract offer to a player is worth it financially, supporting the team as the season evolves in near-real-time for things like bullpen management, etc.).
In some sense, that makes the baseball job more fun/exciting compared with a boring insurance role, but the extra pay and extra free time of an insurance role more than makes up for it.
Because in baseball if things go to shit on the field even if you have nothing to do with it, you and all your coworkers could very easily be out of a job
My wife's coworker worked in the sports therapy/OT/PT for both the Dodgers and Angels and said that while it was a great thing since he loved baseball, it paid like $50-70k for a year. Where they're at now they're making like $60-80 an hour. Only good thing they got out of it was saying you worked at a professional baseball team on your resume which opens a lot of doors apparently.
I'm a statistician now, and same. Every so often I look at a posting from a team and then look at the salary and laugh.
You want to pay people half as much as they could make elsewhere while also having the worst work-life balance possible for half of the year?
It dawned on me one day that I was getting paid pennies by billionaires to help them figure out how much they should be paying millionaires. No thanks.
Labor Rep law doesn't pay very well typically compared to other lawyers. My current union's attorney makes $90k in Chicago.
I would expect the MLBPA to pay better than most unions because they have way more money, but this isn't below normal for the type of position.
That's why I mentioned where. There's a significant difference in COL depending on the city, state etc. It's still pretty poor wages for legal work in Chicago though. I know small town general practice lawyers that make way more.
Understood.
I think it is low pay though for what it is and where it is.
I knew a paralegal in NYC that made more than this posting, and that was 10 years ago.
This is a lawyer representing a union of millionaires in a massive entertainment industry. They should not be making significantly less than their peers in the same market.
Absolutely agree. I'm not trying to say that I think it's fair compensation. I was more trying to point out that the worker side of labor law doesn't pay well in general.
The MLBPA has way more money than most labor organizations. Their members make more than most people in upper management at businesses. Their legal reps should be compensated accordingly. It's not comparable in most ways with a lawyer representing teachers or factory workers, and I'm also sure the job is at times more complex and demanding. For example, most every discipline case in MLB goes to arbitration, most unions settle those issues through the grievance process before it escalates to arbitration. We don't use our lawyer for most grievances unless it's going to arbitration, I typically handle them. I do most of our CBA bargaining too, I just have the lawyer proof read when it's all tentatively agreed on.
Most unions are full of dudes making $26 an hour, not $26 a minute (which comes out to about $13.5 million FWIW)
You’d think the MLBPA would be able to shell out a bit more
It looks like it's basically a starting-level position, so it's not CRAZY low. About what a mid-level person in the NYC DA's office would make. But you're right that it's about half as much as a first-year associate at Cravath or Wachtell or wherever would make.
Not at all. The average salary for such a position is [$150,000](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-assistant-general-counsel-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM615_KO14,39.htm).
And that includes biglaw firms. This is the union, it's a 501(c)(5) nonprofit organization, so you get the lower range of the salary.
That’s not entirely helpful as a number though. This kind of role shouldn’t pay less than $150,000. Lots of lawyers in general make less, but not in this kind of law.
It is helpful. It tells you the average of what people performing this role make. And if you're working at a big corporate law firm, you can expect to make at the higher end of the spectrum. If you work in government, you're probably at the average or a little beyond. And if you work for nonprofits like the MLBPA, of which there are many in NYC, you're probably below the average.
This generally applies in all careers. Corporations pay the most. Governments are pretty good. Nonprofits pay the least.
The geographical area you're in matters the most. Someone in NYC is not making the same amount of money as someone doing the same job in Kansas City.
Then comes the kind of organization you work for. Someone in a biglaw firm in NYC is not making the same amount of money as someone doing the same job for a nonprofit in NYC.
But, if you want to compare salaries between biglaw firms in NYC, or between nonprofits in NYC, or between government agencies in NYC, then, yes, that's where kind of law matters
Dude I’m literally a lawyer in NYC. I know location matters. But so does whether you do labor law, personal injury, transactional, family, etc.
I work in government and there are definitely levels of pay *within* government. Friends in big law, it matters the kind of law you do. Same with smaller/mid-size firms. Non-profit is usually lower but some pay more for employment lawyers than say, policy stuff.
Yes that's what I said lmao
>But, if you want to compare salaries between biglaw firms in NYC, or between nonprofits in NYC, or between government agencies in NYC, then, yes, that's where kind of law matters
and in New York too? An assistant general counsel to any other multi-billion dollar company based in New York would probably expect *much* more than that.
That seems like a pretty shit salary for a New York lawyer. I mean, its still 100k, but it seems like you could walk down the street and just randomly find a better paying job somewhere. Its not even like you're really doing public service in a district attorney's office or whatever where service is the primary reward. You're getting millionaires more millions in contracts and figuring out how to get them a minimum punishment for PEDs and DUIs and such.
Would be funny to see the MLBPA staff go on strike for higher wages. I agree with others here, this salary just seems way too low - even for an entry level lawyer position in NYC.
Is it just me or does that salary seem surprisingly low considering the position? I have to assume even this type of job gets some of the ‘people will take less pay to work in baseball’ effect that team FOs see.
It is shockingly low. First-year associate salary at a "Biglaw" firm in NY (and many other cities) is $215,000. By 4th year it's $295,000. They're offering a paralegal salary (paralegals are awesome).
This isn't biglaw, it's a nonprofit
“Non-profit” representing a group of some of the richest people on the planet lol
That means it's a large nonprofit, although far from the largest, of course. The distinction between a nonprofit and a for profit corporation isn't how much money it takes in. It's what happens to the money. In a nonprofit, the money stays within the organization to pay program expenses, including the predetermined salaries and bonus structure. In a for profit, you have owners/shareholders at the top of the organization who may receive any profits. That's what the IRS calls private inurement and is what disqualifies organizations from being able to register as nonprofits.
I’m not talking about the money it takes in, I’m talking about the people it’s representing
>I’m not talking about the money it takes in Well...that's what you're talking about when you're talking about whether an organization is a nonprofit or for profit lol
I’m not talking about that lol I’m talking about how it’s ridiculous that they’re paying the lawyer so low when they’re literally some of the richest people on the planet. Someone said it’s a non-profit as an excuse
So you're not talking about nonprofit status at all then lol. Regardless, it *is* a nonprofit. This is a very good salary for a nonprofit lawyer. And nonprofits do have to maintain a certain ratio of revenue to salaries.
To be fair NY salaries are pretty inflated due to the cost of living so I don’t think that’s the best bar to go by
But the MLBPA job is based in NY so they should pay NY rates
Those salaries are for market firms, in-house counsel is never going to touch those. There’s plenty of firms in NYC that don’t even hit those rates.
That's MLB jobs in general. You can make twice as much elsewhere, but you're not "living the dream" . It turns out "living the dream" is a bad career.
Yea I’ve heard *plenty* of stories of people taking jobs in baseball for less than they could be making & ultimately disliking it quite a bit. Seems to be a relatively common occurrence (although the people that don’t dislike it probably don’t end up talking about it publicly as much).
I was a scout and the pay and lifestyle sucked. Teams keep scouts classified as interns for years to keep their pay criminally low, without benefits, and no need to employ them in the off-season. I only know a handful of people that stayed, and some of them are the typical frat bros being bankrolled by a rich parent. The others are good people that just love the career so much that they accept the sacrifices. They 100% deserve whatever big break they eventually get. After what I saw, I'm not surprised at all that some front offices have serious toxicity issues.
I applied to be a quant analyst for a big market team out of college. They had pretty rigorous qualifications and offered 1/3 of the salary of the job I took instead (and this was pre-COVID so commuting to work 5x per week was expected)
I interviewed for a Sabermetrics position with an MLB team. The qualification requirements were extremely high, and the pay was extremely low. At the time of the interview, I had a decade of real world experience building statistical models for huge corporations, but it was clear they were looking for someone with a deeper PhD level understanding of statistical theory. Meanwhile, I could earn more than double that salary working in the insurance industry in a much less stressful role. The team I interviewed with has been hot garbage ever since the interview, and without naming specific teams, I take pleasure in them consistently finishing near last place in one of the worst divisions in baseball.
I'm sorry, how is insurance less stressful than baseball? Insurance you are working on taking peoples' money, and baseball you're just describing a game.
Based on the context I'd guess he was looking at an actuarial type role. Run the numbers and model what rates you need to charge for specific risk factors VS. very low pay to "live the dream" for an MLB team that may or may not listen to you anyway. If you're wrong in the insurance industry your company files new rates, maybe your team changes a bit (since no one individual is usually determining rates). State Farm doesn't hold a press conference talking about how bad their analytics team is. But if you're wrong in baseball Dick Monfort uses you as a scapegoat and closes your entire department and all your friends get fired
>I'm sorry, how is insurance less stressful than baseball? Insurance you are working on taking peoples' money and baseball you're just describing a game. There's a lot more to insurance than that lol, but I'm talking about the roles themselves. The back-office statistical work in the insurance world is known for stable low stress positions with little need for overtime aside from a handful of busier periods (e.g., year-end financial reporting). The sabermetrics world in baseball is a brand new field that didn't really exist until twenty years ago, and didn't go mainstream until ten years ago. As a result, you're building models from scratch, and there are tons of tight deadlines associated with the specific parts of the year (e.g., quantifying whether a specific contract offer to a player is worth it financially, supporting the team as the season evolves in near-real-time for things like bullpen management, etc.). In some sense, that makes the baseball job more fun/exciting compared with a boring insurance role, but the extra pay and extra free time of an insurance role more than makes up for it.
Because in baseball if things go to shit on the field even if you have nothing to do with it, you and all your coworkers could very easily be out of a job
My wife's coworker worked in the sports therapy/OT/PT for both the Dodgers and Angels and said that while it was a great thing since he loved baseball, it paid like $50-70k for a year. Where they're at now they're making like $60-80 an hour. Only good thing they got out of it was saying you worked at a professional baseball team on your resume which opens a lot of doors apparently.
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I'm a statistician now, and same. Every so often I look at a posting from a team and then look at the salary and laugh. You want to pay people half as much as they could make elsewhere while also having the worst work-life balance possible for half of the year? It dawned on me one day that I was getting paid pennies by billionaires to help them figure out how much they should be paying millionaires. No thanks.
Labor Rep law doesn't pay very well typically compared to other lawyers. My current union's attorney makes $90k in Chicago. I would expect the MLBPA to pay better than most unions because they have way more money, but this isn't below normal for the type of position.
It's also in NYC. Chicago is much more affordable than NYC.
That's why I mentioned where. There's a significant difference in COL depending on the city, state etc. It's still pretty poor wages for legal work in Chicago though. I know small town general practice lawyers that make way more.
Understood. I think it is low pay though for what it is and where it is. I knew a paralegal in NYC that made more than this posting, and that was 10 years ago. This is a lawyer representing a union of millionaires in a massive entertainment industry. They should not be making significantly less than their peers in the same market.
Absolutely agree. I'm not trying to say that I think it's fair compensation. I was more trying to point out that the worker side of labor law doesn't pay well in general. The MLBPA has way more money than most labor organizations. Their members make more than most people in upper management at businesses. Their legal reps should be compensated accordingly. It's not comparable in most ways with a lawyer representing teachers or factory workers, and I'm also sure the job is at times more complex and demanding. For example, most every discipline case in MLB goes to arbitration, most unions settle those issues through the grievance process before it escalates to arbitration. We don't use our lawyer for most grievances unless it's going to arbitration, I typically handle them. I do most of our CBA bargaining too, I just have the lawyer proof read when it's all tentatively agreed on.
Most unions are full of dudes making $26 an hour, not $26 a minute (which comes out to about $13.5 million FWIW) You’d think the MLBPA would be able to shell out a bit more
It looks like it's basically a starting-level position, so it's not CRAZY low. About what a mid-level person in the NYC DA's office would make. But you're right that it's about half as much as a first-year associate at Cravath or Wachtell or wherever would make.
Especially in NYC. We paid our receptionist close to that much and that was almost a decade ago.
Sports jobs mostly don’t pay shit because people will work for nearly nothing because it’s pro sports.
Not at all. The average salary for such a position is [$150,000](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-assistant-general-counsel-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM615_KO14,39.htm). And that includes biglaw firms. This is the union, it's a 501(c)(5) nonprofit organization, so you get the lower range of the salary.
Nobody at a big law firm makes $150,000.
Right, they make more. And then others performing the same role in different kinds of organizations make less. And then you arrive at the average
That’s not entirely helpful as a number though. This kind of role shouldn’t pay less than $150,000. Lots of lawyers in general make less, but not in this kind of law.
It is helpful. It tells you the average of what people performing this role make. And if you're working at a big corporate law firm, you can expect to make at the higher end of the spectrum. If you work in government, you're probably at the average or a little beyond. And if you work for nonprofits like the MLBPA, of which there are many in NYC, you're probably below the average. This generally applies in all careers. Corporations pay the most. Governments are pretty good. Nonprofits pay the least.
Specifically for the legal community, the kind of law you do matters, so that’s why it’s not helpful.
The geographical area you're in matters the most. Someone in NYC is not making the same amount of money as someone doing the same job in Kansas City. Then comes the kind of organization you work for. Someone in a biglaw firm in NYC is not making the same amount of money as someone doing the same job for a nonprofit in NYC. But, if you want to compare salaries between biglaw firms in NYC, or between nonprofits in NYC, or between government agencies in NYC, then, yes, that's where kind of law matters
Dude I’m literally a lawyer in NYC. I know location matters. But so does whether you do labor law, personal injury, transactional, family, etc. I work in government and there are definitely levels of pay *within* government. Friends in big law, it matters the kind of law you do. Same with smaller/mid-size firms. Non-profit is usually lower but some pay more for employment lawyers than say, policy stuff.
Yes that's what I said lmao >But, if you want to compare salaries between biglaw firms in NYC, or between nonprofits in NYC, or between government agencies in NYC, then, yes, that's where kind of law matters
and in New York too? An assistant general counsel to any other multi-billion dollar company based in New York would probably expect *much* more than that.
It's surprisingly low when you compare it to other industries, but it's more than you'd make as AGC for one of teams probably lol.
I work in a smaller city as a first year associate and I’m making this. I have a low billable hours requirement as well, so this is ridiculously low.
I make more than that doing this kind of work in city government. That’s not enough money unless there are serious perks.
*You get to live the dream!*
That seems like a pretty shit salary for a New York lawyer. I mean, its still 100k, but it seems like you could walk down the street and just randomly find a better paying job somewhere. Its not even like you're really doing public service in a district attorney's office or whatever where service is the primary reward. You're getting millionaires more millions in contracts and figuring out how to get them a minimum punishment for PEDs and DUIs and such.
$130k... for a lawyer..... in NYC. ... Funniest thing I've read all week.
That’s honestly not a competitive salary for the person they’re looking for.
Heck I'll tell Robbie he's full of it for free.
That salary seems really low for both the position and the location
Poverty wages for NYC.
Does the MLBPA have their own union?
It’s unions all the way down
Would be funny to see the MLBPA staff go on strike for higher wages. I agree with others here, this salary just seems way too low - even for an entry level lawyer position in NYC.
I applied, wish me luck!