Sigh. Guess we got a little lax in our factchecking around here (i.e., not doing it at all, since it had been a while since anyone bothered to put together a fake memo).

The purported Much Shelist memo that we posted earlier appears to be a fake. Sorry, Chicago.

If anyone has a real memo to send us, please do so. But the lag time between our receiving memos and posting them will undoubtedly increase going forward, due to pranks like this one. Thanks.

Here’s a recent message from a Chicago-based reader:

I’ve got a suggestion for a post. How about one on the Chicago market?

NYC, done. L.A. is pretty much set. DC looks like it’s headed to 160.

But what about Chicago? I think a post along the lines of whether Chicago is going to take a back seat as a lower tier legal market, or match the LA/DC markets, would generate a lot of interest/traffic/comments.

Ok, just my two cents. The stuff on the compensation has been great! Keep up the good work.

We agree with this commenter. There’s no longer much excitement to covering Los Angeles, which is “pretty much set,” and Washington, DC, which will surely settle at $160K (even if some firms drag their feet about it, to save themselves a few weeks’ worth of higher salaries).

But “flyover country” — basically, Chicago and Texas (which we’ll cover in a subsequent post) — is a big question mark. Will these markets match the big money of the East Coast, and retain their status as major legal markets? Or will they fade into regional obscurity, unable to draw the same legal talent as their more flush coastal counterparts?

The big Chicago shops haven’t budged on associate salaries in their home offices. But one Windy City boutique, Much Shelist, isn’t going down without a fight. Last week they raised all of their offices — including their home office, in Chicago — to the $160K scale. The memo appears after the jump.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: The purported Much Shelist memo that appears after the jump is a FAKE.