Associate Salaries, Biglaw, Salary Freeze

Open Thread: Salary Thaw? Anybody?

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On Wednesday, we reported that Patton Boggs was keeping its salary freeze in place. In November, we told you that Covington & Burling was instituting a salary freeze, even though the firm didn’t do it last year.
But the news coming out of D.C. isn’t putting a damper on the holiday hopefulness of some New York-based associates. Above the Law received this question earlier this week:

I’m a senior associate at a large NYC law firm — I’m hearing rumors that some large law firms who have frozen salaries (which unfortunately includes my firm) are preparing for the big thaw — have you guys heard anything to that effect?

Ha. Haha. Unfreezing? Yeah. Let me just ride my unicorn down the streets of El Dorado and see what there is to see.


If you read the comments on the Patton Boggs post, you’ll notice that there is a lot of confusion about what a second straight salary freeze means for associates.
Let’s say you started working in the fall of 2007. You made $160K. You made $160K all through 2008, since you were still a first year. But at the end of your first year, your firm froze salaries. So you headed into 2009, as a second year, but you were still making $160K. You’ve now made $160K for all of your second year. In 2010, you’ll be a third year. But if your firm freezes salaries, again, you’re looking at making $160K, again, for your third year.
You can see how a person in that situation, a person who has been doing good work and billing lots of hours for more than two years, would really feel like it was about time for a raise. Associates heading into their third year are especially aggrieved if their firm has frozen salaries yet continues to increase their billing rate. How can a firm tell these associates that they don’t deserve to be paid any more, but tell their clients that will charge more for the work of these third years?
Of course, the simple market remedy for associates is to simply leave the firm that won’t give them a raise for a firm that will.
But that is not so simple, is it?
This brings us to the question the tipster posed. Are firms preparing to unfreeze salaries? I don’t know; do they have to? If associates can’t move to other firms, if recruits aren’t avoiding the firm, and if clients aren’t calling the firms out, what incentive do firms have to unfreeze salaries? Fundamental fairness? Just trying to be nice?
We’ll see what happens as 2009 comes to a close.
Earlier: Associate Bonus Watch: Patton Boggs and the D.C. Market
Nationwide Salary Freeze Watch: Covington & Burling

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