Photo by Lorie Shaull

From Capitol Hill to K Street, a lawyer in D.C. isn’t hard to find. According to the Avery Index, the District has nearly 1,356 percent more lawyers per capita than New York. So there’s no surprise that D.C. is one of ten metro areas with the most Indeed.com job listings for attorneys in the country.

A new list that names the best metro areas for lawyers to live comes from SpareFoot, an Austin-based company that provides resources for self-storage. The District ranked number five with criteria including job availability, average annual salary, median home price, and median annual rent. Atlanta ranked number one overall, followed by Houston, Chicago, and Boston.

After graduating law school, attorneys have to cough up about $84,000 to $122,000 in college loan debt.

According to Sparefoot’s data, a D.C. lawyer makes an average of $99,000—tying for the third-highest income with Atlanta (although this recent report puts D.C. attorneys’ salaries much higher). What kept the District from ranking higher overall? The high cost of rent (even less shocking). The median annual rent in D.C. is $30,300 compared to Atlanta’s $16,728.

The moral of the story: If living in D.C is a problem for an attorney making nearly six figures, it’s to hell for the rest of us drowning in college loan debt and making much less.