It's not that your experience does not have value. It has more to do with supply and demand. There are far too many experienced mass market reps than there are jobs which drives down the salaries. In turn they would rather pay less money for less experience.
Also this is in no way unique to Pharma. To use yor lawyer example; if you went to a mediocre law school and the only job u could get was as an government prosecuter and you did that for 5 years the likelihood of you becoming a partner at a major lawfirm is very small. There are many businesses that are "young people's" business were you have to climb the ladder early and quickly. Financial service comes to mind. Unfortunately that was not conducive to your lifestyle, which is not the fault of or unique to this or any industry.
