I love it when the legal profession whips itself into a frenzy. All that emoting. The shock. The awe. The outrage.

And it doesn’t take a seismic event to get the profession all hot and bothered. This year, it was spurred by Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, which bumped its first-year salary from $180,000 to $190,000. Immediately, there was breathless speculation: What would other firms do? Will Milbank end up as the lone wolf?