Is There a Maximum Number in This Salary Race?

The world record for the men’s 100 metres has been broken many times. A hundred years ago it stood at 10.4 seconds and not once did any of the subsequent 70-odd record holders last for more than a few years before someone else bettered it.

That is until Usain Bolt ran a 9.58-second race in 2009. That record has now stood for nearly 15 years.

I'm Paul Hodkinson, Editor-In-Chief of Law.com International, bringing you this week's edition of The Global Lawyer.

Prior to Bolt’s record it would have been logical to assume that the time for running the race would continue to shorten, as it had done for the previous hundred years. But that wouldn’t make much sense. Until we find a zero-second sprinter, there has been to be some ultimate fastest time. Bolt effectively established the peak, for now at least.

There is a lesson here relating to the latest pay rises for junior lawyers. It has been a long road of pay increases for junior lawyers in the U.K., U.S. and beyond, and at times it feels a bit like the 100 metre record, with someone always going slightly better than those before. Only the latest salary growth is more dramatic because it is exponential. In the last five years junior lawyer salaries have increased by about 50%.

Surely this process cannot continue forever. At some point it will become too costly to pay such numbers. Don’t forget this is not just what is paid to the most junior lawyers, it also has a cascading effect costing firms huge amounts as they adjust the salary bands of the more senior associates as well, even though there has been a bunching effect.

At a time when many firms are pulling out of Asia because they feel it is not profitable enough, it feels almost immoral to be throwing such bumper pay packets around elsewhere. As juniors get paid more and more their ability to set boundaries for their own mental health is weakened as well. I spoke at a panel event hosted by a notoriously high-paying law firm on the topic of mental health last week, and an in-house legal director remarked that her team does not get paid well enough to be on call every weekend. Juniors in their early 20s earning $225,000 a year cannot say the same.

What we need, what many law firm leaders and others are praying for, is a market peak. A Usain Bolt of the legal world that sets a rate so far ahead that no one can beat it and the rest of the market can catch a breath.

At the moment, the legal world watches the likes of Cravath Swaine & Moore...

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