While Pennsylvania’s biggest firms seem to all have the same strategy for setting associates’ salaries — keep up with the Joneses (or the Pipers, if you’d rather) — midsized and small firms’ approaches depend on the type of firm.

Midsized firms that are full service say they tend to see a trickle-down effect that eventually causes them to raise first-year associate salaries — though a direct relationship is hard to pin down.