We are likely to see three types of firms. Those that continue to keep up with [the associate pay] scale. Those that just decide to get off the merry-go-round. And those that fall into the middle — they’ll try to keep up with the scale, but they just won’t be able to.
— William Josten, manager for enterprise legal content at the Thomson Reuters Institute, offering his thoughts on how the ever-increasing compensation scale will play out among Biglaw firms. In a new survey released by Thomson Reuters and Georgetown Law’s Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession, associate salary increases were listed as a high (29%) or medium (46%) risk to profitability by respondents.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.