My first two years as an attorney, I wrote and argued appeals for the Prosecutors’ Appellate Service, which subsequently became a state agency. My starting salary was $15,500, which was actually in the top 10 percent of starting salaries for attorneys coming out of Loyola University Chicago School of Law in 1975. By the time I left the PAS, I was making $21,000.In 1977, I took a job as a prosecutor for the Illinois Department of Registration and Education, which later became the Department of Financial and …