Starting pay at the largest US law firms has stagnated over the last three years, as research released this week shows the percentage of practices offering more than $160,000 a year has continued to shrink, reports Global Legal Post.
According to a survey conducted by the Washington DC-based National Association for Law Placement, for the first time in five years, at firms of 700 lawyers or more, the percentage of newly-qualifieds bagging that top-level pay packet dipped to below half.

Big Apple, big pay
Reporting on the research, the National Law Journal said that only 46 per cent of the top firms paid the top rate. The report highlights statistics from major jurisdictions across the country, pointing out that roughly two-thirds of large firms in Los Angeles and Washington DC reported first-year associate salaries of $160,000, down from 90 per cent three years ago.
New York continues to be the best US city to qualify in – some 87 per cent of the big firms in the Big Apple stumped up the top level salary to first-year lawyers.

Frozen wages
Median starting salaries for the second tier of US firms – those with between 250 and 700 lawyers – ranged between $135,000 and $145,000, according to the report.
The association’s executive director, Jim Leipold, told the Journal that the financial crisis had effectively frozen starting salaries in the US legal sector. ‘Compared to the period of 2006 through 2009 when associate salaries were rising year-on-year at a steady clip,’ he said, ‘in the period since the recession hit the legal industry we have seen associate salaries remain more or less static. Among the largest firms, there has been a measurable backing away from $160,000 as a starting salary, though that level of compensation is still dominant in New York and a few other markets.’