Incoming associates at Haynes and Boone will start work Nov. 30 with a starting salary for 2009 of $145,000. That’s below the $160,000 first-year salary that’s been the first-year BigTex market rate.

Richard Fijolek, a partner in Dallas who is the firm’s financial partner, says the firm hasn’t yet decided what it will pay the first-year lawyers in January. “We haven’t decided what we are paying in 2010. We are trying to figure out what the market is,” Fijolek says.