Summary: Starting salaries in Pennsylvania law firms are seeing an increase to match other big city locations, making the state a more desirable place to work.
The starting salary in the Pennsylvania offices of DLA Piper, Dechert, Drinker Biddle & Reath, and other law firms have raised this year to $160,000. Historically, when one law firm has changed their salary, many other firms would follow but the law firms seemed to have been dragging their feet with this salary increase.
Dechert made their announcement in April that their Philadelphia and Princeton, New Jersey offices would raise the salary to match the starting salaries in their other offices. This affected 90 associates working in the two offices.
DLA Piper raised their salary at the beginning of the year but they do not currently have any first year associates working in the Philadelphia office.
Drinker Biddle & Reath confirmed that they were raising their starting salary to $160,000 from $140,000 but will not give any more details. This appears to be another trend that law firms are following each other on. With finances already being a sensitive subject, law firms are no longer going to announce when they change their salary scales.
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, Morgan Lewis, Duane Morris, Cozen O’Connor, Pepper Hamilton, and many others are also increasing their starting salaries to keep up with the competition.
Source: http://www.thelegalintelligencer.com/home/id=1202735835569
Photo: huffingtonpost.com