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Kilpatrick First-Years Join the $145,000 Club
Fulton County Daily Report
September 14, 2007
Kilpatrick Stockton will raise pay for its first-year associates to $145,000, matching the recent salary increases at Alston & Bird, King & Spalding and several other big firms. The market for first-year pay at Atlanta's big firms was $130,000 before a round of pay raises that started in early August -- the second this year.
The Kilpatrick raise, which was announced internally Aug. 31, right before the Labor Day holiday, will go into effect Jan. 1, 2008, as at other firms raising associate pay.
Pay for more senior associates will also increase, but those numbers have not been decided, said Diane L. Prucino, the firm's co-managing partner. "We're raising them all the way up the scale ... but it has not been finalized yet."
The firm also raised pay to $145,000 for North Carolina first-years and to $160,000 for Washington and New York first-years.
Kilpatrick also is moderately increasing its billable hours requirements. The minimum billable hours target for the firm's least-experienced attorneys, called level one, will increase from 1,800 hours to 1,900 hours and for more senior associates will rise from 1,900 hours to 1,950 hours. The new billable targets take effect Oct. 1, the beginning of the firm's associate evaluation year.
Alston & Bird sparked this round of Atlanta pay raises on Aug. 1 when it increased associate pay across the board, starting at $145,000 for first-years and rising to $190,000 for seventh years -- the same scale that Hunton & Williams instituted in February during the year's first round of associate salary increases. At that time, most of the city's big firms increased first-year pay from $115,000 to $130,000. That followed a similar $15,000 pay increase at the beginning of 2006, also sparked by Alston.
Other firms that have announced they will raise local first-year pay to $145,000 in January include Troutman Sanders, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan and Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker. Jones Day will raise first-year pay to $150,000 at that time.
