At dinner the other night, an Am Law 100 partner recounted a story that I would have otherwise thought apocryphal. His firm, concerned about associate morale, invited its lawyers to start working shorter or varied hours in return for reduced pay. With a rueful laugh, he said the firm had to quickly withdraw the offer because, to the chagrin of the partners, every associate in its main office asked for the reduced schedule.
With that tale in mind, I looked, with some surprise, and a few rueful laughs, at the new salary increases for first-year associates. It’s unclear to me just what the new wage scale is going to accomplish besides, as one managing partner likes to put it, “an income redistribution from clients to young lawyers.”
