It's the annual changing of the new guard at the nation's law firms. The summer associates have wrapped up their stints while recent law school graduates are gearing up for their first year of work.
And thanks to one firm, the new lawyers can expect higher pay than in the past. The going rate at large firms in New York has reached $145,000 ”” apart from starting and year-end bonuses ”” while the base salary in cities other than New York is approximately $10,000 lower, according to an annual study released Aug. 1 by the National Association for Law Placement.
The recent round of pay increases began last year, when Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, a litigation firm based in California with offices in New York, decided to increase the base pay for first-year associates to $135,000, which at the time exceeded even the $125,000 starting salary common at many New York firms. A partner, A. William Urquhart, said his firm “hoped bigger firms wouldn't follow so we could separate ourselves, but they did.”
A few months later, Sullivan & Cromwell, a large law firm with headquarters in New York, raised the base salary for new lawyers by $20,000, to $145,000.
In this age of instant communication, it did not take long for word of the raise to spread. Associates heard of the increases via BlackBerry and text messaging as well as from legal publications and Web sites like vault.com and greedyassociates.com. And the associates were not shy about sharing their knowledge with the partners of their firms.
Mr. Urquhart said: “Typically I will find out what is happening with salaries within hours, either through my daughter, who is a third-year associate at a New York firm, or through recruitment coordinators. The news travels like lightning.”
Salary discussions in most professions are confidential, but candor is the rule at law firms.
“It's a funny phenomenon that it's all very public,'' said Steven J. Steinman, a partner at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. “It's an unusual facet of practicing law that if you're an associate your salary is very well known. I don't know of any other industry where you can find out with specificity what people make.”
Jamie Gordon, who is near the end of her first year as an associate at Proskauer Rose, said there was a “buzz about the raise,” at Proskauer when Sullivan increased its base rate. Soon enough, Proskauer raised its own rate for associates. “And people were happy,” Ms. Gordon said.
As a result of the increase at Sullivan & Cromwell, Quinn Emanuel, and most large New York firms, quickly raised its starting pay again to match the new standard.
Most firms followed suit because they compete for the same law students, and also need to stanch attrition of their current associates. Hiring has become particularly competitive because of expanding practices in corporate law, litigation and bankruptcy.
William V. Fogg, one of the partners responsible for recruiting and hiring at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, said that “law firms are getting bigger at a faster rate than law schools,” creating a growing demand for lawyers and commensurate salary increases.
Despite the sharing of information, one area remains murky. Year-end bonuses ”” as well as those sometimes given before associates arrive ”” may vary by thousands of dollars and the public information is frequently “less transparent,” said Gail S. Berney, the head of professional development at Proskauer Rose.
Some firms, like Cravath, Swaine, give associates the same bonus based on class year. Others may have a range to reflect longer hours worked by some associates. A few lawyers speculated that the bonus this year could be slightly less than last year's so that total compensation remains the same.
In addition, while some firms, like Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Quinn Emanuel, pay associates in all their office the same salary, others offer a premium based on the cost of living. Those starting at Fried, Frank's Washington office earn $10,000 less than their New York counterparts; the associates at Proskauer's offices are paid based on the “local going rate,” Ms. Berney said.
The inevitable issue for clients as well as the firms is whether higher salaries are reflected in increased hourly rates. But Michael J. Gillespie, a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, another law firm based in New York, said: “There's not really a connection between salary levels and hourly rates. We set salaries at whatever is necessary to attract and retain the best associates. We set hourly rates by client demand and market conditions based on firms operating at our level in the market.”
And Mary Korby, a partner in the Dallas office of Weil, Gotshal, said her firm had not “raised our first-year rates in response to the salary increase.''
“It's basically coming out of the partners' pockets,” she said.
Another concern is whether firms will reduce the time their associates are allowed to spend on professional development during the first year and increase their billable hours to compensate for the higher starting salaries. Ms. Berney of Proskauer and Ms. Korby said that was not the case at their firms. Ms. Korby even said the increases had an opposite effect.
“When the pay started escalating so rapidly in ways that are shocking to those who have been in the compensation area, we decided we had to put additional time and money into training,'' she said. “Our clients are looking at those coming through the door being paid, well, startling amounts. And they expect them to be the best they can be.”
It's alright postal, just remember that these guys probably work long hours in a thankless profession that isn't really understood or valued by society.
Lawyers want to make a lot of money so they work hard and demand a high salary. Architects don't want to make money. If it was up to architects in general, we all would be working for free. Which profession with the same level of education and lenght in training earns as bad as us?
...these guys probably work long hours in a thankless profession that isn't really understood or valued by society.
Maybe, but starting at $140k you could easily buy everyone's appreciation.
I also completely disagree that society doesn't appreciate them. We all make fun of/crack jokes about them, but we respect them for #1 that they know all this stuff we need but will never truly understand and #2 we all know they make bank and more times than not, money=respect.
I'd go so far as to say, all in all, they are a highly respected profession.
It's often been countered that we get paid more than your average Artist.
The reason for that, of course, is that most of what we *do* get paid for is as close to Art as a well-drafted summons is.
As for lawyers well, we all know they're by and large venal and amoral and don't give a twopenny f*** about the public good.
lawyers make more money than architects because they are more creative than architects. lawyers operate on the limitless plain of abstractions based on relationships of concepts. the billing potential here, much like the internet, is unrestrained by any boundaries.
architects, by comparison are firmly grounded by the material reality of the world in which we live. this necessarily limits our compensation to the restraints of three dimensions. not surprising then that our wages are as cold and hard as a piece of steel.
why all this complaining about our pay? i like my pay. my wife and i live a nice life. we don't want for anything. we have money left over and money in savings. and yes, we both work and no, she doesn't make more money than i do.
maybe we're just more grateful for what we have because we weren't spoiled growing up. i don't know. i'm sure a lot of you will say, "hey, our parents were career enlisted in the military too. hey, our parents ran bowling alleys too. our parents worked in molded plastic plants too. and we're still pissed."
but i don't know. i think that this profession's pay scale is a rude awakening to those of you who grew up in childhoods of privilege. most architects in the US are in the middle class, and most of those entering the profession did not enter into it from the middle class but from the upper class. at least it feels like most architects grew up privileged, from my education and my work experience.
when i was growing up, attaining middle-class status meant moving up, not down. and damnit, i don't need any more money than i make right now. and i don't live on ramen noodles paid for with a payday loan. we have new cars, new houses, and money in the bank. i don't know what all the complaining is about.
Well, The Gritti Palace in Venezia charges about £340 a night ($700?) for a single room so poor li'l me can only afford to be there two nights before skulking off to 'Death in Venice' des Bains Hotel on the Lido.
And if that wasn't demeaning, I want a Maserati to drive for fun and I can't afford one! Boo Hoo.
If it wasn't for lawyers, we wouldn't need 300 page construction documents. Which means we wouldn't need cad monkeys to work 60 hours a week for eight bucks an hour. What would you do?
135k......
oh god.
i think architects should start charging more for their services. for god's sake, architects are equally unexpendable as lawyers. yeah, there is less demand for architects, but the need is pretty inelastic, right?
i second that, lawyers make the most obnoxious clients, and rarely
pay their WHOLE bill. i now have a special contract for lawyer clients that stipulates all kinds of penalties/charges for late/non payment/ work stoppage/changes/etc.. they love it, and actually pay on time now.
To put things in context, lawyers and architects started nearly on the same pay scale footing immediately after the war. Although the effects of an entire slew of political and legislative changes have not been lost on me, this is still a good moment to reflect on why such incommensurable differentials have taken place.
I have heard of many reasons why this is so. My favorite one is 'we cannot draw pictures or sketches to explain to the judge'. A few interpretations: architects are not interested in the fine print generally; architects cannot write; architects are not involved enough to make the project "happen", and so on. Architects are simply not trained to take the profession pragmatically and seriously. To add to all this, society mandates the legal profession for self-preservation but society does not mandate the legality of architecture for the same value. It is a troubling thought.
One comforting thought in reality here is that those folks making $140K a year without bonus is really taking on 3x$45K jobs at the same time if you truly observe how they get screwed around in their first few years. But we who makes $45K a year get to work hard, talk about architecture, dream big and really get a life going. Unless swimming with sharks all the time is your idea of the summa bonum, then architecture is not bad after all.
not all lawyers get paid this way... it only happens in the largest markets like NYC... starting salaries for lawyers in Tampa, Miami, Orlando, and other Florida cities is somewhere in the range of $70K-$80K... that's still a lot more than architects, but a little more palatable...
also, these salaries are only the largest, most respected firms... which in comparison to architecture i suppose is a little weird since the starchitects typically pay crap... government lawyers (i.e. district attorneys, state attorneys, public defenders) also don't get these ridiculous salaries... my wife is an assistant state attorney and i actually make more money that she does...
BE hit it on the head that these lawyers are really working so many hours that they are essentially working 3 jobs paying $45K...
all that being said... it still does bother me a little bit that a law school graduate with only 3 years of law school can make so much more than a newly minted architect with 6 years of professional education (4 undergrad + 2 grad)...
I recently had a conversation with a lawyer friend at one of these firms about billing. My time is currently billed at about $100/hr. Engineers in our office are billed at about $180/hr. Principal time costs about $225/hr.
My friend's time -- right out of law school -- was worth about $500/hr.
Although, to verify something mentioned above, he did work 16+ hr days, with maybe one day off every two months, for his first year out. Also, he boss was a maniac who onced called him at home at midnight on a Saturday night to berate him for arranging to take Sunday off: "You are a professional, and your parents coming to town is not an excuse!" Although, now he works a more regular schedule than I do, and of course, makes 3-4 times more money. (Though he does have 3-4 times more student loan debt than I do).
This is aggravating when I have to haggle with an employer for an extra couple thousand a year to add my wife to my health coverage.
i dont know why most people on this post dont understand that the problem is not lawyers getting paid more, but the actual problem is that architects are paid way less.
Maybe one of the criteria for professional registration should be that we compose a charting album of pop music first, so that we don't need to worry so much about cash after qualifying.
That really depends on your perspective: would you like your glass half full or your glass half empty. As far as I am concerned, it looks the same to me: lawyers are paid generally more than architects. In some cases, way more than architects will ever make in a life time.
Sep 6, 06 8:43 pm ·
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For New Lawyers, the Going Rate Has Gone Up
Just for fun...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/business/01legal.html?ex=1157342400&en=afece540a66dcde8&ei=5087%0A
For New Lawyers, the Going Rate Has Gone Up
It's the annual changing of the new guard at the nation's law firms. The summer associates have wrapped up their stints while recent law school graduates are gearing up for their first year of work.
And thanks to one firm, the new lawyers can expect higher pay than in the past. The going rate at large firms in New York has reached $145,000 ”” apart from starting and year-end bonuses ”” while the base salary in cities other than New York is approximately $10,000 lower, according to an annual study released Aug. 1 by the National Association for Law Placement.
The recent round of pay increases began last year, when Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, a litigation firm based in California with offices in New York, decided to increase the base pay for first-year associates to $135,000, which at the time exceeded even the $125,000 starting salary common at many New York firms. A partner, A. William Urquhart, said his firm “hoped bigger firms wouldn't follow so we could separate ourselves, but they did.”
A few months later, Sullivan & Cromwell, a large law firm with headquarters in New York, raised the base salary for new lawyers by $20,000, to $145,000.
In this age of instant communication, it did not take long for word of the raise to spread. Associates heard of the increases via BlackBerry and text messaging as well as from legal publications and Web sites like vault.com and greedyassociates.com. And the associates were not shy about sharing their knowledge with the partners of their firms.
Mr. Urquhart said: “Typically I will find out what is happening with salaries within hours, either through my daughter, who is a third-year associate at a New York firm, or through recruitment coordinators. The news travels like lightning.”
Salary discussions in most professions are confidential, but candor is the rule at law firms.
“It's a funny phenomenon that it's all very public,'' said Steven J. Steinman, a partner at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. “It's an unusual facet of practicing law that if you're an associate your salary is very well known. I don't know of any other industry where you can find out with specificity what people make.”
Jamie Gordon, who is near the end of her first year as an associate at Proskauer Rose, said there was a “buzz about the raise,” at Proskauer when Sullivan increased its base rate. Soon enough, Proskauer raised its own rate for associates. “And people were happy,” Ms. Gordon said.
As a result of the increase at Sullivan & Cromwell, Quinn Emanuel, and most large New York firms, quickly raised its starting pay again to match the new standard.
Most firms followed suit because they compete for the same law students, and also need to stanch attrition of their current associates. Hiring has become particularly competitive because of expanding practices in corporate law, litigation and bankruptcy.
William V. Fogg, one of the partners responsible for recruiting and hiring at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, said that “law firms are getting bigger at a faster rate than law schools,” creating a growing demand for lawyers and commensurate salary increases.
Despite the sharing of information, one area remains murky. Year-end bonuses ”” as well as those sometimes given before associates arrive ”” may vary by thousands of dollars and the public information is frequently “less transparent,” said Gail S. Berney, the head of professional development at Proskauer Rose.
Some firms, like Cravath, Swaine, give associates the same bonus based on class year. Others may have a range to reflect longer hours worked by some associates. A few lawyers speculated that the bonus this year could be slightly less than last year's so that total compensation remains the same.
In addition, while some firms, like Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Quinn Emanuel, pay associates in all their office the same salary, others offer a premium based on the cost of living. Those starting at Fried, Frank's Washington office earn $10,000 less than their New York counterparts; the associates at Proskauer's offices are paid based on the “local going rate,” Ms. Berney said.
The inevitable issue for clients as well as the firms is whether higher salaries are reflected in increased hourly rates. But Michael J. Gillespie, a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, another law firm based in New York, said: “There's not really a connection between salary levels and hourly rates. We set salaries at whatever is necessary to attract and retain the best associates. We set hourly rates by client demand and market conditions based on firms operating at our level in the market.”
And Mary Korby, a partner in the Dallas office of Weil, Gotshal, said her firm had not “raised our first-year rates in response to the salary increase.''
“It's basically coming out of the partners' pockets,” she said.
Another concern is whether firms will reduce the time their associates are allowed to spend on professional development during the first year and increase their billable hours to compensate for the higher starting salaries. Ms. Berney of Proskauer and Ms. Korby said that was not the case at their firms. Ms. Korby even said the increases had an opposite effect.
“When the pay started escalating so rapidly in ways that are shocking to those who have been in the compensation area, we decided we had to put additional time and money into training,'' she said. “Our clients are looking at those coming through the door being paid, well, startling amounts. And they expect them to be the best they can be.”
you suck... this article makes me crave some ultraviolence
Start filling out you law school applications...
Or buy some lottery tickets, but even if you win you might not make that much money.
I'm sure it's hard earned money.
It's alright postal, just remember that these guys probably work long hours in a thankless profession that isn't really understood or valued by society.
news flash: architects get paid less than lawyers!
next thread
Lawyers want to make a lot of money so they work hard and demand a high salary. Architects don't want to make money. If it was up to architects in general, we all would be working for free. Which profession with the same level of education and lenght in training earns as bad as us?
Maybe, but starting at $140k you could easily buy everyone's appreciation.
I also completely disagree that society doesn't appreciate them. We all make fun of/crack jokes about them, but we respect them for #1 that they know all this stuff we need but will never truly understand and #2 we all know they make bank and more times than not, money=respect.
I'd go so far as to say, all in all, they are a highly respected profession.
You do realize that droog was being sarcastic?
It's often been countered that we get paid more than your average Artist.
The reason for that, of course, is that most of what we *do* get paid for is as close to Art as a well-drafted summons is.
As for lawyers well, we all know they're by and large venal and amoral and don't give a twopenny f*** about the public good.
lawyers make more money than architects because they are more creative than architects. lawyers operate on the limitless plain of abstractions based on relationships of concepts. the billing potential here, much like the internet, is unrestrained by any boundaries.
architects, by comparison are firmly grounded by the material reality of the world in which we live. this necessarily limits our compensation to the restraints of three dimensions. not surprising then that our wages are as cold and hard as a piece of steel.
why all this complaining about our pay? i like my pay. my wife and i live a nice life. we don't want for anything. we have money left over and money in savings. and yes, we both work and no, she doesn't make more money than i do.
maybe we're just more grateful for what we have because we weren't spoiled growing up. i don't know. i'm sure a lot of you will say, "hey, our parents were career enlisted in the military too. hey, our parents ran bowling alleys too. our parents worked in molded plastic plants too. and we're still pissed."
but i don't know. i think that this profession's pay scale is a rude awakening to those of you who grew up in childhoods of privilege. most architects in the US are in the middle class, and most of those entering the profession did not enter into it from the middle class but from the upper class. at least it feels like most architects grew up privileged, from my education and my work experience.
when i was growing up, attaining middle-class status meant moving up, not down. and damnit, i don't need any more money than i make right now. and i don't live on ramen noodles paid for with a payday loan. we have new cars, new houses, and money in the bank. i don't know what all the complaining is about.
and i love my job. what more could someone want?
i worked in a plastic injection molding factory!
...and i felt ALIVE!!!!
Well, The Gritti Palace in Venezia charges about £340 a night ($700?) for a single room so poor li'l me can only afford to be there two nights before skulking off to 'Death in Venice' des Bains Hotel on the Lido.
And if that wasn't demeaning, I want a Maserati to drive for fun and I can't afford one! Boo Hoo.
yes, but would anyone here actually want to do what lawyers do?
If it wasn't for lawyers, we wouldn't need 300 page construction documents. Which means we wouldn't need cad monkeys to work 60 hours a week for eight bucks an hour. What would you do?
135k......
oh god.
i think architects should start charging more for their services. for god's sake, architects are equally unexpendable as lawyers. yeah, there is less demand for architects, but the need is pretty inelastic, right?
lawyers make big bucks cuz they know there Rights!!!
most of my lawyer clients dont pay their bills...they are all cunts
i second that, lawyers make the most obnoxious clients, and rarely
pay their WHOLE bill. i now have a special contract for lawyer clients that stipulates all kinds of penalties/charges for late/non payment/ work stoppage/changes/etc.. they love it, and actually pay on time now.
To put things in context, lawyers and architects started nearly on the same pay scale footing immediately after the war. Although the effects of an entire slew of political and legislative changes have not been lost on me, this is still a good moment to reflect on why such incommensurable differentials have taken place.
I have heard of many reasons why this is so. My favorite one is 'we cannot draw pictures or sketches to explain to the judge'. A few interpretations: architects are not interested in the fine print generally; architects cannot write; architects are not involved enough to make the project "happen", and so on. Architects are simply not trained to take the profession pragmatically and seriously. To add to all this, society mandates the legal profession for self-preservation but society does not mandate the legality of architecture for the same value. It is a troubling thought.
One comforting thought in reality here is that those folks making $140K a year without bonus is really taking on 3x$45K jobs at the same time if you truly observe how they get screwed around in their first few years. But we who makes $45K a year get to work hard, talk about architecture, dream big and really get a life going. Unless swimming with sharks all the time is your idea of the summa bonum, then architecture is not bad after all.
RIP Croc Hunter
not all lawyers get paid this way... it only happens in the largest markets like NYC... starting salaries for lawyers in Tampa, Miami, Orlando, and other Florida cities is somewhere in the range of $70K-$80K... that's still a lot more than architects, but a little more palatable...
also, these salaries are only the largest, most respected firms... which in comparison to architecture i suppose is a little weird since the starchitects typically pay crap... government lawyers (i.e. district attorneys, state attorneys, public defenders) also don't get these ridiculous salaries... my wife is an assistant state attorney and i actually make more money that she does...
BE hit it on the head that these lawyers are really working so many hours that they are essentially working 3 jobs paying $45K...
all that being said... it still does bother me a little bit that a law school graduate with only 3 years of law school can make so much more than a newly minted architect with 6 years of professional education (4 undergrad + 2 grad)...
I recently had a conversation with a lawyer friend at one of these firms about billing. My time is currently billed at about $100/hr. Engineers in our office are billed at about $180/hr. Principal time costs about $225/hr.
My friend's time -- right out of law school -- was worth about $500/hr.
Although, to verify something mentioned above, he did work 16+ hr days, with maybe one day off every two months, for his first year out. Also, he boss was a maniac who onced called him at home at midnight on a Saturday night to berate him for arranging to take Sunday off: "You are a professional, and your parents coming to town is not an excuse!" Although, now he works a more regular schedule than I do, and of course, makes 3-4 times more money. (Though he does have 3-4 times more student loan debt than I do).
This is aggravating when I have to haggle with an employer for an extra couple thousand a year to add my wife to my health coverage.
architphil hit it on the head. I say the hell with working for a starchitect who does not respect his/her own field of work.
i dont know why most people on this post dont understand that the problem is not lawyers getting paid more, but the actual problem is that architects are paid way less.
Maybe one of the criteria for professional registration should be that we compose a charting album of pop music first, so that we don't need to worry so much about cash after qualifying.
That really depends on your perspective: would you like your glass half full or your glass half empty. As far as I am concerned, it looks the same to me: lawyers are paid generally more than architects. In some cases, way more than architects will ever make in a life time.
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