Informed sources tell The Wired GC that several major money-center law firms are planning to roll back hourly rates to levels last seen in the 1980’s. “It’s time to take action” one managing partner said, requesting anonymity, “clients told us that they dread opening our monthly statements, so we wanted to send a message and get out ahead of the competition.”
When told of these plans, a Gotham GC remarked, “Great, I’ll buy more and start paying invoices within 3 days by wire. Who needs golf and tickets to U2 when you have this?”
An in-the-know partner was asked how the economics of the rollback would work and quipped, “We’ll see, I think it has something to do with Moore’s Law. Do you have a cite for it?” A follow-up question about a rumor that annual billable hour targets were being raised to 2750 drew a curt “No comment”.
This source did confirm that recently hired first-year associates will be informed today that their base salaries would be reset to $50,000.