Over the last few weeks, many firms from the middle of the country decided to role-play as a drunk insurance adjuster from Omaha making it rain at the Vegas strip club with money he almost assuredly can’t afford. The frenzy became so intense, it’s not even controversial to say that the Dallas and Houston markets are officially set at $180K now by the sheer inertia of it all.
But what we’d actually expected to see out of these firms that are not actually Cravath dopplegängers is upward movement to reflect the changing market, but coming in respectably below the Cravath scale. There’s no shame in a firm recognizing that it isn’t doing Cravath business, as long as it also realizes that market movement at the top requires adjustments all the way down the line.
Husch Blackwell, an Am Law 200 firm with PPP just north of $600K, has joined this more sober group of attendees at Cravath’s proverbial bachelor party.
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Husch Blackwell’s offices in Austin, Chicago, Dallas, and D.C. moved to $160K (UPDATE: Chicago was already at $160K, so they didn’t get anything new), bringing them to what was the old New York normal. Denver is at $135K. The firm’s headquarters in Kansas City, along with St. Louis and Phoenix, move to $130K, while the firm’s offices in Wisconsin (Madison, Milwaukee, and crucial Waukesha County) move to $120K.
Meanwhile, to close the loop on the opening analogy, first-years in Husch Blackwell’s Omaha office will be making $105K, which should be just enough to get through the party weekend without selling three pints of blood for walking-around money.
The full list of raises, including some of Husch Blackwell’s other smaller offices, is available on the next page…
Remember, when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches Cravath”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.
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Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.