Lawyer Pay
Will Salary Wars for Big-Firm Associates Cool in 2008?
Posted Jan 10, 2008, 10:21 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Last year, new associates at big New York firms earned 22 percent of their compensation in bonuses, but some suggest the compensation gravy train could be stalling.
The last time big-firm associates earned such a large proportion of their compensation in bonuses was in 2000, the National Law Journal reports. That year, first-year associates at the big New York law firms earned 24.2 percent of their compensation in bonuses.
The next year, Internet stocks tanked, and the Sept. 11 attacks further damaged an already slowing economy. First-year bonuses went from $40,000 to $20,000 and salaries held firm at $125,000, putting bonuses at 13.8 percent of total compensation, the NLJ story says.
In 2007, many first-year associates at the big firms were doing considerably better, earning as much as $45,000 in bonuses and base pay of $160,000. Will the pattern repeat itself?
Quite possibly, according to the article. “All that cheer in 2007 may become a distant memory, as 2008 is looking increasingly leaner,” it says.
Already there is talk of a recession in 2008, and some law firm consultants told the NLJ that some law firms won’t be able to match salaries offered by competitors if they give associates a raise. James Cotterman, a lawyer pay consultant with Altman Weil, said he expects only a handful of law firms to raise pay in 2008.
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Posted by Disgruntled Student - 5 months, 3 weeks, 14 hours, 58 minutes ago
I’m getting sick of hearing about Big Firm sallary all the time lately. Great, some new lawyers are being paid enough to actually cover their student loan bill. Meanwhile the vast majority of young lawyers are paid a small fraction of that Big Firm sallary. How about some articles about those guys? Another article in this week’s journal says that fewer people are applying to law school because Big Firm partners only earn $1mil per year as opposed to the $2mil that bankers are getting. That’s ridiculous. Besides the lucky few, most lawyers are happy to get $100K per year, and are using that to pay off far more than that in student loans. So please, forget the wealthy few, and give us an article about the problem that actually includes 80% of your readers. Why is it becoming so financially unsafe to enter our proffesion, and how can we fix it?
Posted by Miami Associate - 5 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, 17 hours, 24 minutes ago
DStudent-if you learned how to spell, you might find yourself in that “lucky few”
Anyhow, the reason big firm salaries matter is b/c they have a trickle-down effect. The “80%” (in theory) reap the benefits of the salary wars b/w the big firms.