Salary · Am Law 100 mid-level
Ballard Spahr salary 2026: the mid-level lockstep discards.
The dated USD figures are office-and-practice pay-transparency bands, not a Cravath ladder. A general counsel matching this firm still buys that discarded 2–5 year seat — housing finance, consumer-finance defense, retail class actions — because the lockstep product is a different hire.
Ballard Spahr salary in 2026 is a posted band, not a lockstep.
Open the table first. Ballard Spahr salary in 2026 is two dated USD ranges on a university reprint of the employer's own posting, plus clerkship cash and a stipend — not a 1–8 year lockstep. Sartori maps roughly 7,500 lawyers in Philadelphia; the coverage is what makes the shortlist half of this problem tractable.
The firm's laterals page, accessed 11 September 2026, lists compensation as competitive and a profit-sharing bonus with no dollar grid. It does not publish a first-year-to-eighth-year base table. Posted band. Not a scale.
The dated USD table is below. The lockstep comparator, and why a company still needs the people on it, follows in the next sections. The gap against Milbank is unpacked in full.
| Seat | Office | PQE / gate | 2026 USD | Instrument |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Appellate litigation associate | Seattle | 2–5 years | $220,000–$275,000 | Pay-transparency range |
| Appellate litigation associate | Portland | 2–5 years | $205,000–$245,000 | Pay-transparency range |
| Incoming former summer associate | Firmwide | Entry | $12,500 | Stipend |
| Federal court of appeals clerkship | Firmwide | Clerkship | $60,000 | Clerkship bonus |
| Federal district court clerkship | Firmwide | Clerkship | $40,000 | Clerkship bonus |
| Highest state appellate clerkship | Firmwide | Clerkship | $15,000 | Clerkship bonus |
| Two-plus years federal (district + court of appeals) | Firmwide | Clerkship | $75,000 | Clerkship bonus |
Yale reprint: recruitment began 31 August 2026, listing expires 7 October 2026. Other live laterals (housing finance, chancery, commercial and retail litigation, white collar, corporate/M&A) are listed as “competitive” with no dollar band — those seats are demand signals, not 2026 salary figures, and they are not in this table.
- 8 years
- Partnership-track eligibility after law-school graduationEmployer-stated clock, not a 2026 promotion census
- Ballard Spahr laterals page, 2026
- 4–6
- Attorneys in the stated practice who typically interview a lateraling associateEmployer-stated process, laterals page
- Ballard Spahr laterals page, 2026
- 71
- Chambers USA 2026 ranked departmentsUSA guide profile accessed 11 September 2026
- Chambers USA 2026 profile
- 6.7%
- Class of 2025 jobs in business — lowest share since 1989Only 34.4% of those business jobs required bar admission
- NALP Class of 2025 Selected Findings, 5 August 2026
Ballard Spahr associate salary sits below the scale the market uses to discard it.
The 2026 lockstep is a real published ladder. It is not this firm's ladder. The gap is the reason a compensation committee mis-prices the hire — and the reason the general counsel who actually needs the work still has to go and get it.
Above the Law reported on 2 June 2026 that Milbank raised associate bases by $10,000 to $20,000 by class year, effective 1 July 2026. Biglaw Investor's compiled 2026 ladder, accessed 11 September 2026, reads $235,000 / $245,000 / $270,000 / $320,000 / $385,000 / $410,000 / $440,000 / $455,000. That ladder, and the firms that matched it, belong to our BigLaw associate salary scale for 2026. This page uses it as a comparator only. Above the Law's 2026 summer scorecard, with tables updated through August 2026 on the page, lists matching firms and does not include Ballard Spahr.
Place the posted Seattle mid-level ceiling on that axis and the discard rule is arithmetic. The 2–5 year appellate band tops out at $275,000 in 2026; the Milbank fourth-year base is $320,000 and the fifth-year base is $385,000. The entire published Ballard 2026 associate range sits below the lockstep fourth-year base. A compensation committee that opens a matching in-house requisition against the lockstep table will call the posted band “below market.” The lockstep market discards this mid-level. A general counsel matching this firm still buys it.
NALP's June 2025 Bulletin+ report on the 2025 Associate Salary Survey, as of 1 January 2025, is the other public check, and it is dated before the Milbank raise. The overall median first-year base was $200,000; the median in firms of more than 700 lawyers was $215,000; $225,000 was the most frequently reported figure, at 32 percent of offices overall and 44.7 percent of offices in 701-plus firms. Philadelphia was not among the cities where NALP said $225,000 had become the standard. Seattle sat at 14.3 percent of reporting offices (n=7). That survey does not publish a Ballard-specific cell, and this page does not invent one.
The refusal to match lockstep is not new. Bloomberg Law reported on 15 June 2016 that the then-chair had no intention of matching Cravath's $180,000 first-year; a firm spokeswoman put Philadelphia starting salary at $150,000 that year and said salaries vary by office. That $150,000 figure is 2016. It is here as a documented pricing segment, not as a 2026 number. The 2026 fact that follows from it is simpler: this firm still publishes office-and-practice bands rather than a class-year match, and a general counsel who treats the absence from the scorecard as a quality signal is reading a recruiting advertisement, not a matter list. The associate sitting in the Seattle 2–5 year band is earning real 2026 cash. The company that needs GSE execution or a class-action second chair is buying that cash, not a miss against $320,000.
Portland 2–5 appellate floor
Yale OCS reprint of the firm posting; recruitment began 31 August 2026.
Yale Office of Career Strategy, 2026 ↗| Published Ballard band | Posted 2026 USD | 2026 Milbank class-year (comparator) | What the gap does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portland 2–5 appellate floor | $205,000 | $235,000 (1st year) | Opens under the 2026 first-year lockstep base |
| Portland 2–5 appellate ceiling | $245,000 | $270,000 (3rd year) | Below the 2026 third-year lockstep base |
| Seattle 2–5 appellate floor | $220,000 | $235,000 (1st year) | A 2–5 year floor under the first-year lockstep base |
| Seattle 2–5 appellate ceiling | $275,000 | $270,000 (3rd) / $320,000 (4th) | Touches third-year; sits under fourth-year |
The lockstep market discards this mid-level. A general counsel matching this firm still buys it.
The cash around the band is published. The year-end bonus is not.
Clerkship bonuses, a $12,500 incoming stipend and a 1,900-hour floor are on the careers page. Profit-sharing is named and not priced. Anyone selling a 2026 Ballard bonus grid is reconstructing one.
The laterals page accessed on 11 September 2026 is explicit about what it will put in writing. Incoming former summer associates receive a $12,500 stipend. Clerkship bonuses are $60,000 for a federal court of appeals, $40,000 for a federal district court, $15,000 for the highest state appellate court, and $75,000 for two-plus years of federal clerkships with at least one year each at a district court and a court of appeals. Full-time associates face a 1,900-hour minimum annual billable requirement, with pro bono credited. Profit-sharing is described as a bonus program without a published dollar grid. Year-end bonus dollars of the Cravath kind are not on the page, and they are not estimated here.
That split matters to both readers. The associate earning the figure can add clerkship cash to a posted band and still not know the profit-sharing outcome. The general counsel paying a matching in-house seat should not assume a lockstep year-end bonus sits on top of the $220,000–$275,000 Seattle 2–5 year range, and should not assume its absence either. The honest brief is: base is a transparency band where the employer has posted one; variable pay is a named program without a public formula; hours are 1,900 with pro bono inside the count.
The entry-level channel is the summer program, not an in-house pipeline. The law-students page calls the 10-week Summer Associate Program “our primary source for recruiting first-year associates.” As of the 11 September 2026 check, 2027 summer hiring was already closed. 2026 fellowships were listed in Baltimore, Denver (with Denver International Airport) and Philadelphia (with Corteva). A company that wants a 3L from this platform is a year late; a company that wants the 2–5 year product the laterals page is actually hiring is on time.
Ballard Spahr partner salary is a PEP figure, not a W-2.
Public partner economics for this firm are Am Law-style profits and a 2026 nonequity plan. Anyone quoting a partner salary scale is quoting a document that is not public.
The American Lawyer reported on 9 March 2026 that 2025 gross revenue reached $678.6 million and that profits per equity partner crossed $1 million for the first time. The same lede said gross revenue and net income were each up over 25 percent, and that the firm planned to create a nonequity partnership tier in 2026, ending a single-tier partnership. The body of that article is NewsVault-gated; this page uses the public lede only. PEP is a ratio — distributable profit divided by equity partners — and the companion read on why that ratio is not partner pay sits at partner pay at the Am Law top 50.
Headcount has to be dated, because the platform changed. A firm release dated 6 January 2025 said the combination with Lane Powell, effective 1 January 2025, produced more than 750 lawyers in 18 U.S. offices, with Seattle the largest office outside Philadelphia. A 12 February 2026 release opened San Francisco as the 19th office, said the combination had added 150 attorneys and offices in Anchorage, Seattle and Portland, and put more than 100 pending matters on the joining class-action team. An 18 May 2026 release restated more than 750 lawyers in 19 offices. Internet Legal Research Group's 2025 ranking still shows 550 attorneys and 220 partners — a pre-combination vintage, not an average with the post-combination 750-plus. Chambers USA 2026 lists 268 partners and 19 offices.
Philadelphia remains the founding and largest office, with a practice mix the office page lists as litigation, business and transactions, finance, real estate and intellectual property. The 2026 laterals inventory is litigation-heavy: chancery in Delaware; commercial and retail litigation in Portland, San Francisco and Seattle; housing finance in Baltimore, Minneapolis, Philadelphia or Washington, D.C.; white collar in New York; corporate/M&A in Seattle. The litigation department page, accessed 11 September 2026, puts more than 365 attorneys in 19 offices. That is a department headcount, not a firmwide lawyer count, and it is not averaged with earlier “more than 250” or “nearly 350” bands on other firm pages.
Published associate cashPublished partner economics
- Pay-transparency band Office-and-practice USD on an ATS reprint. A general counsel can put it next to an in-house requisition and know what the firm-side alternative actually costs.
- Named, unpriced bonus Profit-sharing exists as a program and not as a dollar grid. Clerkship cash is the only variable the careers page will put a number on.
- PEP and a nonequity plan Equity economics are an ALM average. The 2026 nonequity tier is a structure change, not a published partner salary. Treat “partner pay” here as profits, not as a W-2.
The buyer is a general counsel. The firm is the training desk.
Three payers sit on the same mid-level: the firm as employer of record, the in-house department that later hires that trained seat, and the public issuer or HUD counterparty that creates the work. Only the second one is the company reader this page is written for.
Across 250 structured interviews with Philadelphia partners and counsel, 64 of 81 general counsel, deputy general counsel and heads of legal at commercial banks, mortgage servicers, retailers and housing-finance agencies over a 24-month window said they would rather hire a 3–7 year associate off this firm's housing-finance, consumer-finance or retail class-action desk than a lockstep class-year from a New York capital-markets group. A deputy general counsel at a GSE-approved multifamily lender in that cut put it without ornament: the lockstep fifth-year is a price for a product I do not buy. That is not a preference about culture. It is a statement about the work: a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac execution seat, a store-brand credit program, a municipal new-issue, a pending consumer class action. None of those become a New York capital-markets hire because the lockstep table moved in June.
The work those 81 in-house lawyers were describing is on the firm's own practice pages. Housing Finance names Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac product work, FHA-insured financing, GNMA MBS, LIHTC, and bond and underwriter's counsel for state housing agencies. The Housing Finance practice page, accessed 11 September 2026, describes by counterparty type a Fannie Mae lender on a $182 million multifamily loan, Freddie Mac and Fannie servicers on portfolio transfers of $200 million–$500 million-plus to public REIT sponsors, and a Freddie Mac lender on a 50-property seniors-housing portfolio at $700 million aggregate. A general counsel at a GSE-approved lender who needs that fluency is not shopping a lockstep fifth-year. Affordable Housing and Community Development, accessed 11 September 2026, cites more than 400 LIHTC projects and more than 125 housing authorities, with HUD as counterparty on RAD and mixed-finance. Consumer Financial Services puts more than 70 lawyers against depository institutions, card issuers, mortgage lenders, payment processors, CRAs and fintechs, with Chambers USA ranks in consumer-finance compliance, litigation, and enforcement. Retail & E-Commerce represents more than 100 retail and e-commerce brands and more than 130 pricing matters; the 12 February 2026 San Francisco opening added that team and more than 100 pending matters.
The volume underneath those desks is not a lockstep premium. The Mortgage Bankers Association, on 19 October 2025, expected total single-family origination volume of $2.2 trillion in 2026, from $2.0 trillion expected in 2025. SIFMA's Capital Markets Fact Book, published 13 August 2026, put 2025 long-term municipal bond issuance at $587.3 billion, up 14.3 percent; SIFMA's municipal statistics page dated 3 September 2026 put year-to-date 2026 issuance through August at $408.5 billion. The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's Midyear 2026 summary recorded $299 billion of new issuance through June 2026. Bond Buyer placed this firm in the top 10 U.S. bond counsel in the first half of 2024 and in the top 25 for full-year 2025. The firm's rankings page cites the Bond Buyer Municipal Marketplace Red Book listing continuously since 1958, and Refinitiv year-end 2024 as number one in Pennsylvania long-term municipal new issues as bond counsel and as underwriter's counsel.
Lockstep scorecardIn-house payroll
- Class-year lockstep The market scorecard. A first-year is a first-year. The general counsel matching this firm is not shopping that product, and the firm is not on the match table.
- Posted PQE band The 2–5 year appellate band and the senior laterals on the careers page. Housing finance, retail class actions, CFS, white collar. This is what the firm actually prices in 2026.
- Company-side scope Associate general counsel, VP counsel, deputy GC. Mortgage, payments, retail litigation, housing, middle-market M&A. The discarded mid-level is the feed, not the miss.
| Company type | In-house seat | What it buys from this mid-level | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial bank, nonbank lender or GSE-approved servicer | Associate general counsel or VP counsel, mortgage / GSE execution | Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA and LIHTC product knowledge from the housing-finance desk | Firm Housing Finance practice page, accessed 2026-09-11 |
| National retailer or e-commerce brand | Deputy general counsel or VP litigation; privacy counsel | Consumer class-action second-chair, pricing defense, CIPA/TCPA/VPPA and store-brand credit | Retail & E-Commerce industry page; laterals page class-action Seattle seat |
| Card issuer, payments company or fintech | Associate general counsel, consumer lending or digital wallets | CFS compliance and litigation from a 70-plus-lawyer national desk | Consumer Financial Services industry page, accessed 2026-09-11 |
| State housing finance agency or large public housing authority | General counsel or deputy GC; housing-finance counsel | Bond counsel, underwriter's counsel and RAD/LIHTC execution | Affordable Housing page; Bond Buyer 2024–2025 ranks |
| Middle-market public or PE-backed portfolio company | Deputy GC, M&A or corporate | Lower-middle and middle-market deal execution, not a lockstep New York PE premium | Mergers and Acquisitions practice page; Seattle corporate/M&A laterals |
The lockstep fifth-year is a price for a product I do not buy.
The mid-level is licensed, barred, and on a clock the 3L has not started.
PQE bands, resident-office bar, a writing sample, and — for the headquarters office — Pennsylvania Rule 204. Entry-level in-house is not the pipeline. Staff-attorney seats are not the partnership-track product.
The laterals page is the live hiring inventory, accessed 11 September 2026: partnership-track associates in chancery (Delaware); commercial litigation (Portland); commercial/retail litigation (San Francisco); commercial litigation/class actions (Seattle); bankruptcy litigation (Seattle); labor and employment (Denver; Los Angeles); labor relations (Seattle or Portland); white collar and investigations (New York); housing finance (Baltimore, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, or Washington, D.C.); real estate finance (including a senior Denver seat); corporate/M&A (Seattle); junior employee benefits (Philadelphia); real estate (Philadelphia). Off-track: CFS litigation staff attorney (Baltimore; Los Angeles or San Francisco) and trademark staff attorney (Philadelphia, Atlanta, or Phoenix). Every attorney must be an active member in good standing of the bar of the resident office, or actively pursuing that admission.
Mid-level PQE is specified, not inferred. The Yale reprint of the appellate posting asked for 2–5 years of civil litigation plus a federal or state appellate clerkship, with Washington, Oregon, or destination-state bar (or eligibility to waive in). The laterals page, accessed 11 September 2026, is still posting commercial, retail and class-action laterals in Seattle, Portland and San Francisco without a class-year dollar grid. Those are the discarded seats: not lockstep class years, but PQE bands and practice labels on a national-firm desk.
Pennsylvania motion admission is the headquarters gate. The Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners' interpretation of Rule 204, accessed 11 September 2026, requires an ABA-accredited J.D., more than 50 percent of time in the practice of law, and at least five years' worth of weeks with more than 20 hours of practice per week inside a seven-year window. Work before bar admission, including a judicial clerkship before admission, does not count. Positions within companies in which the applicant is not corporate counsel will not count. A mid-level moving into Philadelphia from a non-reciprocal bar cannot use Rule 204 until that five-of-seven clock is met. The HQ associate seat is therefore exam, UBE-transfer, or already-Pennsylvania-barred — and an in-house hire of that same person into a Pennsylvania company payroll has to ask the same question.
NALP Bulletin+ in May 2026, covering 2025, recorded 3,535 lateral lawyers among 305 offices, up 16.4 percent versus 2024. Lateral associates were 58.2 percent (2,059, up 17.1 percent); partners 22.3 percent; other (staff attorney and counsel) 19.5 percent. This firm's 2–5 year posting and the senior laterals on the careers page sit inside that associate-lateral market. They do not sit on the lockstep scorecard. NALP's Class of 2025 selected findings, dated 5 August 2026, put 6,588 Class of 2025 graduates into firms of more than 500 lawyers — 33.2 percent of law-firm jobs. The 3L is trained on the firm desk. The general counsel matching this firm does not buy the 3L.
Price the posted band. Do not brief the lockstep table.
Sartori's Philadelphia associate telemetry is 23 closed searches over three years, not a second interview census. The files that treat this mid-level as 'below market' are the ones that stall — and they stall on the compensation committee, not on the shortlist.
Sartori has worked the Philadelphia associate market for eight years. Of 23 closed Philadelphia associate searches over three years, 12 were in-house mandates at commercial banks, nonbank mortgage lenders, retailers or state housing-finance agencies; 7 were Am Law 100–200 associate laterals into housing finance, consumer-financial-services or commercial litigation; 4 were other associate seats. Completion on the line is 93 percent. Typical time-to-fill is 6 to 12 weeks. Counter-offer incidence on the city associate line is 33 percent, and the median offer-to-acceptance window is 9 working days.
The uncomfortable cut is the compensation-committee one. On 6 of the 12 in-house files, the first shortlist was rejected because the hiring committee had priced the seat as below market against the 2026 lockstep. Those six still closed, but they ran to the outer edge of the 6-to-12-week band, and we now brief that friction before we open the search. Sartori's quarterly survey since 2019 finds that 41 percent of in-house respondents who last hired a mid-level from an Am Law 100 firm said the first number they were shown was a lockstep class-year, not a posted band. The survey does not make the posted band less real. It makes the first conversation longer.
A head of legal at a national retailer, inside the same 81-person in-house cut of the Philadelphia interview cohort, said the 5–8 year class-action second chair is the hire: I am not matching Milbank to get someone who has never seen a Song-Beverly complaint. That is the buyer's question this page opened on. The associate earning the Seattle $220,000–$275,000 band in 2026 is looking at the same number from the other side of the table, and both of them are being told, incorrectly, that the number is a miss because it is not $320,000.
Your exposure is a mis-specified band, not a thin market. Price the posted PQE range. Write the work as GSE product, class-action defense or bond counsel, not as a class year.
- Name the desk, not the scale. Housing finance, CFS, retail litigation, public finance. A requisition that opens with “fifth-year, market” will reject the people you actually need.
- Check the bar before the offer. Pennsylvania Rule 204 is a five-of-seven clock into the headquarters city. An already-barred candidate is a different search from a waiver candidate.
- Budget the counter-offer. The firm-side counter is common enough on this line that the compensation committee should have authority before the first shortlist goes out.
- Do not gold-plate lockstep. Matching Milbank to hire GSE execution or Song-Beverly defense is a different product at a different price. The service view of the company-side book is on our in-house counsel recruiting page.
Your posted band is real cash. It is not a lockstep class year, and it is the number a matching general counsel can actually take to a compensation committee.
- Read the instrument. A pay-transparency range is a good-faith estimate at posting, not a paid W-2. Profit-sharing is named and unpriced. Ask for the formula before you treat variable pay as locked.
- Add clerkship cash, not a bonus grid. The laterals page will give you $15,000 to $75,000 for clerkships. It will not give you a Cravath year-end number.
- The in-house buyer is the other market. Banks, servicers, retailers, HFAs and PE-backed portfolio companies hire this mid-level because of the desk, not because of the scale. Our associate guidance covers how to test that market without circulating a name.
- Staff-attorney is a different conversation. Non-partnership CFS and trademark seats are labeled as such. Do not price them as the partnership-track mid-level product.
Two composites from the same 23-file telemetry, described by category only. A PE-backed mortgage servicer needed a deputy-general-counsel seat with GSE execution. The hire was a five-year housing-finance associate off an Am Law 100 desk; the file closed in 11 weeks after a firm-side counter-offer, accepted on day nine, once the compensation committee was briefed against the posted Seattle appellate band rather than against the Milbank fourth-year. A national retailer needed a litigation product-counsel seat. The hire was a 5–8 year class-action second chair; the file closed in eight weeks. Neither mandate would have survived a brief that opened on “lockstep fifth-year or nothing.”
A third composite shows the credential gate the compensation conversation usually skips. A state housing finance agency needed an associate general counsel with LIHTC and bond-counsel fluency. The shortlist only moved once we filtered for already-Pennsylvania-barred candidates; a four-year housing-finance associate who would have been a Rule 204 lateral into the headquarters office was not yet on that clock. The search still closed inside the 6-to-12-week band. The bar question, asked in week one, is what kept it there.
The associate-side service view of this book sits on our associate recruiting page; the method behind the Philadelphia figures is on methodology and the research program. Neighbouring firm tables — including the other Philadelphia platform on the T22 list — own their own keywords. This page owns the posted 2026 bands above, the lockstep gap, and the general counsel who still needs the people sitting in it.
Ballard Spahr pay in 2026: questions from both sides of the table
What is the Ballard Spahr salary in 2026?
There is no published 2026 class-year lockstep. Dated pay-transparency ranges on the firm's own postings run from $205,000 in Portland to $275,000 in Seattle. Yale Office of Career Strategy reprinted a 2–5 year appellate seat in 2026 at $220,000–$275,000 (Seattle) and $205,000–$245,000 (Portland), recruitment beginning 31 August 2026. Year-end bonus dollars are not public. A general counsel matching this firm is buying that PQE band, not a Milbank class year.
What is a Ballard Spahr associate salary at mid-level versus lockstep?
A Seattle 2–5 year appellate ceiling of $275,000 in 2026 sits $45,000 under the Milbank fourth-year base of $320,000. Above the Law reported the Milbank raise on 2 June 2026, effective 1 July 2026; Ballard Spahr does not appear on that match scorecard. The mid-level is priced as a PQE band on a university reprint of the employer posting, not as a class of 2022.
What is Ballard Spahr partner salary in 2026?
No partner W-2 or lockstep partner scale is public. The American Lawyer reported on 9 March 2026 that 2025 profits per equity partner crossed $1 million for the first time, on $678.6 million of gross revenue. The same lede said the firm planned a nonequity partnership tier in 2026, ending a single-tier partnership. PEP is an average of the equity pool, not a paycheck.
Does Ballard Spahr match the 2026 Milbank associate scale?
No public match is on the record. Above the Law's 2026 associate compensation scorecard, updated through August 2026 on the page, lists matching firms and does not include Ballard Spahr. The dated USD figures that do exist are office-and-practice pay-transparency bands, a $12,500 incoming stipend and clerkship bonuses, not a $235,000–$455,000 class-year ladder.
Why would a general counsel hire this mid-level instead of a lockstep associate?
Because the work is GSE product, consumer-class-action defense and municipal-bond counsel, not a New York capital-markets lockstep premium. NALP's Class of 2025 selected findings, dated 5 August 2026, put business jobs at 6.7 percent of all positions — the lowest share since 1989 — so the in-house desk does not buy the 3L. It buys the trained 2–5 year associate this firm's laterals page is actually posting.
How long does a Philadelphia associate search take when the company is matching this firm?
Sartori's Philadelphia associate desk works to a typical 6 to 12 week timeline, with a median of 9 working days from offer to signature. Of 23 closed associate searches over three years, the in-house files that opened against the lockstep table rather than against this firm's posted bands ran to the outer edge of that window. Pennsylvania Rule 204 still requires five of the last seven years of practice for motion admission into the headquarters office.
ATS, ALM, NALP and practice-page sources
Associate USD comes from a university reprint of the employer's posting. Clerkship cash and the stipend come from the laterals page. Partner economics come from The American Lawyer's public lede. Lockstep comparators come from Above the Law and Biglaw Investor. Sartori figures come from the Philadelphia associate program named first in the list.
Interview-cohort findings, closed-search telemetry, counter-offer incidence and the offer-to-acceptance window come from the continuous research program described on our research page. Global mapping of nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles and quarterly surveys since 2019 are Sartori & Partners data.