Change in BigLaw ranks leads to shrinking prevalence of $160K starting pay
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Coveted starting salaries of $160,000 for associates were prevalent at large law firms in 2009, when nearly two-thirds of BigLaw starting salaries were at that level.
The pay picture is quite different in 2014. Now, only 27 percent of the starting salaries paid by large law firms are at $160,000, according to a press release by the National Association for Law Placement. The large-firm category consists of law firms with more than 700 lawyers.
The reason for the shift, NALP says, isn’t because large law firms are paying less to new associates. Instead, the shift is due to a change in the types of law firms with more than 700 lawyers. More law firms in this category are made up of smaller regional offices that don’t pay $160,000 to new lawyers.
The NALP press release notes that $160,000 is still the most commonly reported salary for the largest firms in the largest markets, though the salary isn’t as common as a few years ago.
The median first-year salary in firms of more than 700 lawyers is $135,000, the lowest since 2006.
NALP’s figures are from 560 law offices that responded to the NALP associate salary survey. Forty-nine percent of the respondents were from law firms with more than 500 lawyers, while only about 12 percent were from firms of 50 or fewer lawyers.
A different NALP survey collecting data from law schools, rather than law firms, found that $95,000 was the median pay for new grads in law firms for the class of 2013.
NALP executive director James Leipold commented on the latest survey findings in the press release. “In the simplest terms, it is fair to say that law firm starting salaries are flat,” he said. “The fact that the incidence of $160,000 as the starting salary at the largest law firms is less than it was before the recession is really more a reflection of the changing contours of the large firm market.”
