Biglaw, Holland & Knight, Money

Nationwide Pay Raise Watch: A Biglaw Firm Moves (Closer) To Market

This is good news -- but does it mean anything for the broader Biglaw market?

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Joyful young man holding six stacks of moneyWelcome to the latest installment of Nationwide Pay Raise Watch. Everyone is still waiting on “NY to 190” — and, I suspect, will be waiting for a while — but over the past year, we’ve seen smaller signs of tightening in the Biglaw labor market, in terms of pay raises in pockets of the profession.

The Philadelphia market went to a $160,000 starting salary, and Wilmington followed near the end of last year. Pacific Northwest firms also raised pay a bit, even if not to $160,000. And now we get this news, from an Am Law 100 firm that’s more than 1,000 lawyers strong:

Holland & Knight has finally gone to market (kind of). First and second years are at market, and everyone else is at ‘market range.’ For example, if market is $250,000 for a 6th year, at H&K you can fall between a range of $200,000 and $250,000.

First-years in the top market cities are making $160,000, second-years $170,000, third-years anywhere between $170,000 and $185,000 etc. The ranges get a bit wider as you go up. Then you hit year 9 and it’s ‘discretionary’

People generally seem to be happy about this change, especially the new associates. Higher-level associates are happyish, but obviously would have preferred just going to market.

We reached out to the firm, which issued the following statement through a spokesperson:

We’ve raised first-year salaries in all of our offices except Denver, which opened just a little over a year ago. In our major markets, we increased first-year salaries from $145,000 to $160,000.

So that’s good news. Congrats, H&K associates.

But does it mean anything for the broader Biglaw market? Or will New York and the other major markets remain stuck with the Simpson Thacher pay scale that dates all the way back to January 2007 (i.e., more than nine years ago)?

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