The Recorder, one of Norhtern CA’s legal dailies, published its annual associate salary and bonus survey in its October 5th edition. We could not locate an online link, but the Library and the CDO both subscribe to the Recorder if you are interested in looking at the whole article.
In reading the article, it becomes obvious that large law firms are still trying to figure out what to do in this area. There seems to be a consensus that each law firm is likely to respond differently, but that the status quo (annual, lock-step increases) will likely not hold.
It notes that only a few firms have officially announced that they are stepping back from the $160,000 first year BIGLAW starting salary, but that none have affirmatively announced a definite intention to stick to it going forward. The suggestion was that firms will quickly conform to what they perceive their competition to be doing.
The author interviewed a legal business consultant who noted that firms were realizing savings in other ways — layoffs, salary freezed, deferrals — and most notably by simply hiring alot fewer new associates. He speculated that large law firm hiring is down by one-third to one-half.
The article has an accompanying chart that makes it easy to compare compensation figures for 20 large CA firms.