Law firm cuts it's starting salaries (Pittsburgh, York: lawyers, salary, quality of life)

[Honest Bob]

Law firm Reed Smith said it will slash salaries by nearly 20 percent for first-year associates who are joining its U.S. offices in January.
Starting salaries for the eight attorneys scheduled to join the Pittsburgh office will be $110,000, down from $135,000 in 2008. In larger markets such as New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., the first-year associates will earn $130,000, down from $160,000 last year.
Those affected would normally have started working for the firm in September but their start date was deferred because of the economic downturn. Reed Smith is hiring 51 associates next year in its 15 offices in the U.S.
The Pittsburgh-based firm also reduced the number of hours that first-year associates are expected to bill -- from 1,900 to 1,700.
Gregory Jordan, the firm's global managing partner, said the cuts came in response to client feedback about the cost of legal services.
It has about 1,600 lawyers in 23 offices worldwide. Earlier this year, Reed Smith laid off 17 associates in the U.S. and nine associates in London. It also laid off 74 support personnel.
[LEFT]
Read more: Law firm cuts starting salaries
[/LEFT]

[Hopes]

It makes sense to cut starting salaries when the cost of living has decreased.

It's commendable that Reed Smith has reduced the amount of billable hours. That's going to add to quality of life for a profession that typically takes your first born.

It's about time Reed Smith stops wasting money. I remember seeing an advertisement for an event's coordinator. The job primarily coordinated partner retreats.

The pay was out of this world for an events coordinator. I can't remember the exact salary advertised, but it was somewhere between 65k to 90k.

Big money for a cake job that simply provides perks to the partners and doesn't generate revenue.

[BrianTH]

Law firms all over have been doing stuff like this, and generally it has long been known that the basic economic structure of many firms didn't make much sense for clients (or really associates and increasingly junior "partners" who were no longer really partners). So maybe the current pressures will cause a fundamental shakeup of the whole industry.