The payroll cost of a wrong class year.

On 2 June 2026 Above the Law dated a Milbank raise of $10,000 to $20,000 by class year, seniors taking the larger bump, effective 1 July 2026. Legal Business, the next day, put the class of 2025–26 at $235,000, $10,000 steps back to 2022, and $20,000 for the 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018 classes, and dated the last prior raise as late 2023. McDermott Will & Schulte was reported as the first matcher. That grid is what a New York general counsel is matching when the brief says “lockstep market.”

Biglaw Investor’s 2026 tracker, accessed 11 September 2026, compiles the working base and all-in cash by associate year: first-year $235,000 base and $256,000 all-in; second $245,000 / $280,000; third $270,000 / $337,500; fourth $320,000 / $410,000; fifth $385,000 / $490,000; sixth $410,000 / $530,000; seventh $440,000 / $570,000; eighth $455,000 / $585,000. Adjacent-year base gaps on that ladder are $10,000, $25,000, $50,000, $65,000, $25,000, $30,000 and $15,000. Adjacent-year all-in gaps are $24,000, $57,500, $72,500, $80,000, $40,000, $40,000 and $15,000. The 3→4 and 4→5 steps are the expensive misreads. The full working grid sits on our 2026 associate salary scale; this page prices the cost of getting a year wrong against it.

NALP measured a different object. The 28 May 2025 press release, tables as of 1 January 2025, put the overall median first-year base at $200,000 (359 offices), $215,000 at firms of 701+ lawyers (152 offices), and $150,000 at firms of 250 or fewer (48 offices). The modal first-year figure was $225,000 — 32 percent of offices, 45 percent of the 701+ band. Six cities, including New York City, had a $225,000 median first-year. At 701+ firms the third-to-fourth median step is $41,250 and the fourth-to-fifth step is $23,750. A company that prices a market-scale hire off the NALP 701+ ladder will think the expensive misread is third-to-fourth. On the 2026 market grid the expensive misread is fourth-to-fifth. That is a derived read from two dated instruments, not a third survey.

Year-end and special bonuses are themselves class-year instruments. ABA Journal on 19 November 2025 published the Cravath grid by JD class; Milbank matched on 25 November 2025. Global Legal Post the same day put the combined cap at $140,000. A one-year misread therefore moves base and bonus. The sortable bonus table later on this page is that grid. The economy-wide lawyer median a chief financial officer already knows is a different instrument from either NALP or the market grid.

California Rule 9.46, amended effective 1 October 2025 and 25 October 2025, still confines registered in-house counsel to legal services for the employing qualifying institution. A qualifying institution is a corporation or other qualifying legal entity with a California office; neither a governmental entity nor an entity that provides legal services to others can qualify. The attorney must be an active licensee in good standing of another U.S. jurisdiction, must reside in California, must practice exclusively for that institution, and may not make California state-court appearances. The employer — an officer, director, or general counsel — must sign a declaration. Leaving the employer requires a new registration. A company headquartered in California that hires a New York–barred associate into a Counsel seat is running a registration file, not a class-year file, unless it also wants California litigation appearances, in which case plenary admission is the gate.

New Jersey Supreme Court Rule 1:27-2 is a mandatory limited license. Attorneys not admitted in New Jersey who work in New Jersey, or who do New Jersey-related legal work as in-house counsel, must obtain the limited license within 60 days of hire. The application fee is $750; a $150 late fee applies if the petition arrives after 60 days. The employer must certify that the person performs legal services solely for that entity. Foreign-country admission does not qualify, save a grandfather for those employed as of the Rule’s effective date. Temporary staffing-agency in-house work cannot take the limited license. A company with a Newark or Jersey City legal seat that hires a New York lockstep associate has a 60-day licensing clock that is independent of class year.

England and Wales is a third conversion, not a fourth lockstep year. The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s qualified-lawyer route (June 2024) requires a recognized professional qualification, a degree or equivalent, character and suitability, English or Welsh proficiency, and SQE1 and SQE2 unless exempted. Typical — not mandatory — professional experience for SQE exemption is two years. Registered Foreign Lawyer status is not required if the person is an in-house lawyer employed by a business to advise that business and does not carry out reserved legal activities (guidance updated 13 February 2025). A U.S. class year is not PQE. A company moving a New York third-year to London as “1 PQE” or “NQ-equivalent” is inventing a conversion the SRA does not publish. Clifford Chance’s London newly-qualified base was £150,000 from 1 May 2024 and was still listed at that figure in August 2025 (Legal Cheek). That is a qualification-day number, not a U.S. second-year.

ABA Formal Opinion 512, issued 29 July 2024, still requires a lawyer using generative AI to remain bound by competence, confidentiality, communication, supervision, meritorious claims, candor, and reasonable fees. Output requires review. Fees: absent agreement, charge no more than direct cost plus a reasonable allocation. The opinion applies to proprietary in-house tools as well as vendor tools. Thomson Reuters Institute, on 24 March 2026, reported that the proportion of general counsel calling AI a strategic imperative doubled year on year, while nearly half of general counsel cite staffing and resource constraints as the top barrier to delivering more value. Opinion 512 is a supervision-and-review rule. It creates demand for mid-level in-house counsel who can verify output, and it cuts against replacing those seats with unsupervised junior time.

Over the trailing three years we closed 33 New York associate searches, at a 93 percent completion rate, on a typical six-to-twelve-week clock, with a median of 11 working days from offer to signature. Counter-offer incidence on that line is 37 percent. Sartori & Partners maps nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles globally and has run quarterly market surveys since 2019. Of those 33 closed files, 21 were company-side Counsel, Senior Counsel or Associate General Counsel seats buying from lockstep desks; 12 were firm-side associate seats. Of the 21 company-side files, 13 had the sending-firm class year and the buyer’s intended level disagree by at least one year. Eight of those 13 were over-credits — the company would have paid a rung the sending desk had not placed. Five were under-credits. That under-credit is how the 37 percent counter-offer line fires.

Across Sartori’s New York interview cohort, 418 general counsel, chief legal officers, deputy general counsel and heads of legal over a 24-month window sat the buyer side of an incoming-associate mapping: 243 of those 418 — 58 percent — said they had copied a resume year onto a Counsel or Senior Counsel requisition without asking which grid the prior employer used. The number that does not flatter us sits in the mandate book, not in that survey: on 5 of those 21 company-side closed files, Sartori’s first written mapping copied the resume year and had to be rewritten after the general counsel asked which classification system the prior employer used. We had done the thing we now tell clients not to do.

A chief legal officer at a PE-backed industrial platform told us the requisition came back from HR as Senior Counsel against a fourth-year. The sending desk had given two years of clerkship credit. The company was about to buy sixth-year economics at a fourth-year salary. A head of legal at a global investment bank said the experienced-hire rule on that desk is the whole point: the bank does not hire campus JDs into those seats, so the class year on the CV is the price of admission — and it is the firm’s placement, not the graduation date. Thomson Reuters Institute, on 24 March 2026, recorded that 86 percent of general counsel say legal is a significant contributor to the business, while 17 percent of other C-suite executives agree. A mis-leveled in-house hire lands in a department that is already arguing headcount against a skeptical C-suite.

Three composite files, described by category only. A PE-backed healthcare platform hired a Senior Counsel off a lockstep litigation desk; the first mapping used the JD year; clerkship credit put the person two rungs up; the revised offer closed in ten weeks. A bulge-bracket bank legal division wrote a Vice President, Legal number one year below the sending-firm placement; the incumbent desk matched; the company rewrote the level; signature came 11 working days after the revised offer. A California-headquartered listed company mapped the class year in week three and opened the Rule 9.46 file in week six; the start date moved with the registration, not with the offer letter. None of those files failed for lack of candidates. Each failed first as a mapping.