Salary · Named firm · 2026
Duane Morris salary 2026: the mid-size cell versus New York lockstep
From 1 July 2026, matching New York lockstep means $235,000 to $455,000 in base. Hiring off a Duane Morris mid-level cell in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago or California still prices inside posted targets of $220,000 to $310,000. This page is the dated table for both readers.
The 2026 number is a range on an ATS, not a class-year grid.
Anyone searching for Duane Morris salary in 2026 is looking at posted target ranges, not a class-year grid. Across 250 structured interviews with Philadelphia partners and counsel, company legal departments asked first whether they had to match New York lockstep or could hire off a mid-size cell. From 1 July 2026 that question has a dated answer.
Philadelphia products / mass-tort associate, 4–5 years: posted target $250,000–$280,000 on 11 December 2025. Fourth-year lockstep from 1 July 2026 is $320,000; fifth-year is $385,000. Firm ATS ↗
Four posted floors, one comparison market. The cheap window is mid-level and mostly outside New York. The full 2026 inventory is the table below.
- $758.4m
- FY2025 gross revenueA 9.2 percent rise from $694.2 million
- The Lawyer, 15 May 2026
- $1.682m
- FY2025 profits per equity partnerALM PEP; not a 2026 distribution and not nonequity pay
- Wikipedia infobox citing Law.com, retrieved 26 May 2026
- 14
- Partnership elevations, 20 January 2026Eleven of the fourteen were Trial Practice Group
- Firm partnership release, 20 January 2026
- 39
- Chambers USA 2026 ranked departmentsNinety-three ranked individuals on the same profile
- Chambers USA 2026 firm profile
What the ATS actually posted, office by office.
Philadelphia is the headquarters cell and the cheapest measured mid-level window versus lockstep. The table is the firm’s own target-pay language, not a reconstructed scale.
Careers and ATS pages do not print a first-through-eighth-year base table. The careers page was last updated on 30 April 2025. Listings run through 6 May 2026. Compensation is disclosed as a target annual pay range for a named office, a named practice and a stated year-of-experience band, plus “discretionary bonuses and incentive packages.” A writer who needs a lockstep grid for this named firm has to omit it and say it is not public. That is the honest opening, and it is why this page is a table of cells rather than a class-year ladder.
NALP’s 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey, as of 1 January 2025 and released on 28 May 2025, put the overall median first-year base at $200,000, flat versus the 2023 report, and the median in firms of more than 700 lawyers at $215,000. Six cities had a $225,000 median: Austin, Boston, Houston, New York City, San Francisco and Washington, DC. Philadelphia is not on that list. Through calendar 2025 a mid-size Am Law platform could still post junior targets in the $220,000–$250,000 band without being an outlier versus the median. After 1 July 2026 the comparison cell is the new lockstep, not the 2025 NALP median. Reuters, reporting the same NALP release on 28 May 2025, noted that median summer-associate offers per office fell to six in 2024 from seven in 2023.
| Seat | Office | Years | Posted target | Posted | Bar / gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Products / mass tort | Philadelphia | 4–5 | $250,000–$280,000 | 11 Dec 2025 | PA / NJ |
| Commercial litigation | Philadelphia | 4–6 | $260,000–$350,000 | 16 Jul 2025 | PA |
| Private client | Philadelphia | 5+ | $285,000–$395,000 | 6 May 2026 | PA |
| Private client, senior | Philadelphia | 7+ | $395,000+ | 4 Mar 2026 | PA |
| Corporate junior | Philadelphia | 2–3 | $225,000–$245,000 | 2025 ATS | PA |
| Products staff (off-track) | Philadelphia | 4–7 | $155,000–$185,000 | 7 Jan 2026 | PA |
| Foreclosure staff | Philadelphia / S. Jersey | 2–4 | $115,000–$150,000 | 14 Jan 2026 | PA / NJ |
| Corporate transactional | Baltimore | 2+ | $225,000–$250,000 | 24 Oct 2025 | MD |
| Commercial litigation | Baltimore | 3–5 | $255,000–$305,000 | 20 Feb 2026 | MD |
| Commercial finance | Chicago | 2–3 | $225,000–$250,000 | 8 Dec 2025 | IL preferred |
| Labor & employment | San Diego | 3+ | $220,000–$250,000 | 28 Jan 2026 | CA |
| Labor & employment | CA multi-office | 3–5 | $250,000–$310,000 | 14 Oct 2024 | CA |
| Labor & employment | Silicon Valley | 4+ | $275,000+ / $290,000+ | 16 Oct 2025 | CA |
| Labor & employment | New York | 2–5 | $225,000–$295,000 | 14 Oct 2024 | NY |
| Labor & employment, senior | New York | 6–8 | $350,000–$400,000+ | Deadline 31 Dec 2026 | NY |
| Private client | New York | 2–4 | $245,000–$330,000 | 14 Jan 2025 | NY or waiver; LL.M. required |
| Private client | New York | 5–7 | $285,000–$365,000 | 18 Mar 2025 | NY |
| Commercial litigation | Las Vegas | 3–5 | $220,000–$275,000 | 10 Apr 2026 | NV |
| Trial / commercial | North Jersey | 4–6 | $250,000–$290,000 | 27 Apr 2026 | NJ |
| Insurance coverage | San Francisco | mid-level | $225,000–$300,000 | Deadline 31 Dec 2026 | CA |
| Insurance coverage | Austin | mid-level | $225,000–$285,000 | 2025–2026 ATS | TX |
| Gaming litigation | Location-flexible | 2–6 | $225,000–$325,000 | 29 Oct 2025 | varies |
| Healthcare litigation | Any office | 5–6 | $310,000–$350,000 | 26 Feb 2026 | varies |
| Restructuring | NY / PHL / Dallas / SF | 3–5+ | $250,000–$295,000 | 11 Feb 2026 | varies |
| Real estate, data centers | Washington, D.C. | 8+ | $375,000+ | 12 Aug 2025 | DC |
| Trademark / IP | NY or Philadelphia | 2–4 | $220,000–$280,000 | 15 Apr 2025 | NY / PA |
Two seats are not cheap cells and should not be sold as such: Philadelphia commercial litigation at $260,000–$350,000 for 4–6 years straddles fourth-year lockstep depending on where the offer lands inside the range, and New York senior employment at $350,000–$400,000+ sits against sixth-to-eighth-year lockstep of $410,000–$455,000. Washington, D.C. real estate at $375,000+ for eight or more years of data-center development is a senior price, not a mid-level discount.
Lowest measured mid-level floor
San Diego labor and employment, 3+ years, posted 28 January 2026; Las Vegas commercial litigation, 3–5 years, posted 10 April 2026, starts at the same floor.
Duane Morris ATS ↗Two headcount series sit on this firm and they are not the same number. Wikipedia, citing Law.com, lists 742 attorneys for 2025 and “about 750 attorneys across 29 offices” as of 2026. ILRG’s 2025 largest-firms profile lists 746 attorneys and 387 partners, rank 74. The June 2026 firm fact sheet and the About page both claim “more than 900 lawyers.” Band the operating attorney count at about 740–750 FTE for 2025; do not treat 900 as FTE. The careers page still says the firm is “ranked 73 in the Am Law 100” — that sentence is stale against Wikipedia’s 82nd-place 2025 ranking of 2024 revenue, and it is not used as a 2026 rank here.
Summer 2027 hiring is closed. The careers page, in a 30 April 2025 update, states the firm has completed hiring for the 2027 Summer Associate Program and points candidates to Philadelphia and multi-office NALP statistics for the 2024–2025 academic year. The NALP Directory of Legal Employers blocked access, so a first-year salary on that form is not on this page.
The credential gates on those listings are local-bar first, not class-year first. Recurring 2024–2026 requirements are admission in the office jurisdiction — Pennsylvania, New York or waiver, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois, Texas, California, Nevada, the District of Columbia — plus “stellar academics” on intellectual-property seats, an LL.M. required for New York private client and only “helpful” for Philadelphia private-client taxation, and a Delaware Court of Chancery, Supreme Court or Superior Court Complex Commercial Litigation Division clerkship preferred on the Wilmington litigation posting. Several labor-and-employment and private-client seats are hybrid. A North Jersey briefing seat prefers “Big law experience.” A general counsel matching the cell is buying that gate, not a graduation year.
The lockstep raise did not move the Duane Morris cell. It moved the comparison.
The associate who earns the figure, and the general counsel who pays it.
Two readers sit on the same USD row. One is deciding whether to stay on a mid-size platform. The other is deciding whether to match New York lockstep for work this platform already trains.
Pay the New York cellHire the trained years
- Match lockstep The company copies the New York class-year number into an in-house offer. It buys a sticker, not a docket. From 1 July 2026 that sticker moved.
- Hire off the cell The company prices the posted mid-size range against an internal title — Senior Attorney, Associate Counsel, Associate General Counsel — and buys the years of work the ATS already named.
- Hire the off-track seat Products staff and foreclosure staff are a cheaper Philadelphia cell with no partnership track. Useful when the work is volume and the title does not need to be associate.
Your question is not “what does Big Law pay.” It is whether the years you need are on a mid-size cell you can actually approve.
- Price the title, then the years. A four-to-five-year products associate on the Philadelphia ATS is a Senior Attorney / Associate General Counsel conversation on the ACC 2025 stack, not a fifth-year lockstep conversation.
- Do not gold-plate the requisition. If the work is provider reimbursement, PAGA defense, or commercial litigation that this platform already staffs below lockstep, writing “Am Law lockstep required” into the brief is how the search stalls.
- Pennsylvania has its own gate. A non-PA-barred lawyer hired into a Philadelphia company legal department needs a Limited In-House Corporate Counsel License under 204 Pa. Code r. 302. That is not a Duane Morris associate gate — those postings require the PA Bar — and mixing the two produces a requisition nobody can fill.
- The alumni file is the buyer map. The June 2026 firm fact sheet counts 6,527 contacts with “General Counsel” in the title, 74 alumni who are corporate general counsel, and 266 alumni in in-house corporate counsel seats. Those are the people who already know this cell.
Your posted range is real, and it is not lockstep. The honest comparison is the internal title a company will put on the same years.
- Read the office, not the brand. A San Diego employment floor of $220,000 and a New York senior employment floor of $350,000 are the same letterhead and two different products.
- Special counsel is an on-platform alternative. On 20 January 2026 the firm elevated 14 senior associates to special counsel across six practices and nine offices, including London. That is a priced rung, not a rumor.
- Off-track is a different cell. Philadelphia products staff at $155,000–$185,000 and foreclosure staff at $115,000–$150,000 are not associate scale, and treating them as a failed associate offer misreads the posting.
- Bonus will not close a lockstep gap on paper. There is no published year-end grid to add. If you are comparing all-in cash to a lockstep shop, you are comparing a known bonus column to a blank.
Law-firm experience lifts Attorney median base 16 percent in that same ACC 2025 survey. Entry and mid Attorney roles at companies with revenue above $5 billion sit 27 percent higher in base than at companies under $1 billion. CLOs at companies above $5 billion earn 44 percent more base and 173 percent more total target than CLOs at companies under $1 billion, with large-company CLO total target exceeding $1 million. Those are company-size effects, not a reason to import lockstep into a mid-cap legal department in Philadelphia.
The Pennsylvania in-house gate is statutory. Under 204 Pa. Code r. 302, adopted 30 March 2004, an attorney who is not a member of the Pennsylvania bar and who is employed by a corporation, company, partnership, association or other non-governmental business entity, and who performs legal services in the Commonwealth on more than a temporary basis, must obtain a Limited In-House Corporate Counsel License. Scope is advice to the employer’s directors, officers and employees, negotiating and documenting, and agency appearances if authorized. The license does not authorize Pennsylvania court appearances without pro hac vice, and it expires if the lawyer leaves that employer, with a 30-day window to re-file. The Pennsylvania Bar Association maintains an In-House Counsel Committee. A Philadelphia company legal department that is not hiring a PA-barred lawyer is running this process, not the firm’s ATS bar list.
| Years / desk | Firm-side posted cell | In-house ACC median | The actual gate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2–3 corporate / finance | Baltimore $225k–$250k; Chicago $225k–$250k; Philadelphia junior corporate $225k–$245k | ACC 2025 Attorney median base $148,000 / total cash $160,000 | Local bar of the office; PA in-house needs admission or Rule 302 |
| 3–5 employment / trial | San Diego L&E $220k–$250k; California 3–5 $250k–$310k; Baltimore litigation $255k–$305k | ACC 2025 Senior Attorney median base $201,000 / total cash $228,000 | CA L&E: PAGA / wage-and-hour docket; PA/NJ/MD bar on East Coast trial |
| 4–5 products / mass tort | Philadelphia products $250k–$280k; North Jersey 4–6 $250k–$290k | ACC 2025 Associate GC median base $245,000 / total cash $294,000 | PA/NJ bar; off-track staff alternative $155k–$185k |
| 5–8 healthcare / PCS / NYC L&E | Healthcare litigation $310k–$350k; NYC L&E 6–8 $350k–$400k+; Philadelphia PCS 5+ $285k–$395k | ACC 2025 Deputy GC median base $280,000; GC/CLO $279,000 | NYC PCS: LL.M. required; healthcare: provider-reimbursement years |
I will pay for the products years. I will not pay for a New York class year I do not need.
The cheaper cell stays busy because the dockets did not move with lockstep.
A mid size law firm salary in 2026 is not a discounted lockstep. It is a different product, kept in demand by a stack of 2022–2026 workplace, products, merger and infrastructure rules.
Lockstep moved on 2 June 2026 because a New York bellwether reset a class-year grid. The work that fills Duane Morris mid-level seats did not reset with it. California PAGA filings did not stop after the 1 July 2024 reforms. Reverse-discrimination and DEI attacks accelerated after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions decision of 29 June 2023, White House Executive Order 14173 of 21 January 2025, and the Court’s Ames decision of 5 June 2025. PFAS drinking-water MCLs published on 26 April 2024 still run through the 2020s. Data-center load is a 2025–2030 interconnection story, which is why a Washington, D.C. real-estate seat for data-center development posted at $375,000+ on 12 August 2025. None of that is a reason to match $385,000 for a fifth-year in Philadelphia.
Statute movesThe ATS stays open
- Employment and class action PAGA, Title VII after Ames, contractor DEI after EO 14173. California mid-level labor and employment is the hiring signal, not a New York capital-markets pyramid.
- Trial, products, PFAS Mass-tort and healthcare-litigation desks in Philadelphia and New Jersey. The 2026 partnership class put eleven of fourteen elevations into Trial.
- Corporate, trade, data centers HSR process after the form was vacated, inbound capital, and real-estate development for data-center load. Senior seats, not first-year lockstep.
California’s PAGA reform bills, AB 2288 and SB 92, were signed on 1 July 2024 and apply to civil actions brought on or after 19 June 2024, except where the Labor and Workforce Development Agency notice was filed before that date. The statute did not repeal representative PAGA; it changed standing, penalties and cure. Duane Morris Class Action Review 2025, released 7 January 2025 and restating the California Department of Industrial Relations, counted more than 9,464 PAGA notices in 2024, a nearly 22 percent increase over 2023. Volume, not the statute text, is the 2025–2026 hiring signal. The firm’s 10 February 2026 Law360 Employment Group of the Year release described the Employment, Labor, Benefits and Immigration practice as “about 120 lawyers” and the firm’s third-largest, and said the group was recruiting against growing class actions coming out of California. Leadership of that practice moved from New York to Silicon Valley effective 1 January 2026, announced 8 September 2025.
Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, decided 15 June 2022, split individual PAGA claims into arbitration and left the representative docket in court. Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc., California Supreme Court, 17 July 2023, held that an order compelling arbitration of individual PAGA claims does not, by itself, strip standing to litigate non-individual claims. Combined with the 2024 notice volume, California employment hiring at this firm is a 2023–2026 structural book, not a one-year spike. That is the docket behind San Diego $220,000–$250,000, California multi-office $250,000–$310,000, and Silicon Valley $275,000+ / $290,000+ on the ATS.
Title VII changed the pleading burden on the other coast. In Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, decided 5 June 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court held unanimously that Title VII does not impose a “background circumstances” extra burden on majority-group plaintiffs. Executive Order 14173, 21 January 2025, revoked Executive Order 11246 after a 90-day wind-down, directed OFCCP to stop promoting diversity and holding contractors responsible for affirmative action, and gave the Attorney General 120 days to propose a strategic enforcement plan including up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large nonprofits, $500 million-plus foundations, state and local bar and medical associations, and universities with endowments over $1 billion. That is 2025–2026 employment counseling and defense — senior associate and special-counsel work — not a reason to pay eighth-year lockstep in Philadelphia.
The trial desk is the largest internal hiring map. The firm trial page claims “400 Trial Lawyers” and more than 200 trials and arbitrations with an 85 percent success rate since 2020. On 20 January 2026, 11 of 14 partnership elevations were Trial Practice Group, in New York, Miami, Southern New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, San Francisco and San Diego. The same Class Action Review 2025 analyzed more than 1,441 decisions for 2024 and put the top-10 settlements by substantive area at $42 billion, the third year above $40 billion. PFAS generated the largest class-action settlement in 2024. EPA’s PFAS National Primary Drinking Water Regulation, published 26 April 2024, set PFOA and PFOS MCLs at 4.0 ng/L. Philadelphia products at $250,000–$280,000 is the mid-level price of that docket, not a lockstep markdown.
Corporate demand is messier, which is why it does not justify matching lockstep either. The 2024 HSR form overhaul took effect on 10 February 2025. The Eastern District of Texas vacated that rule on 12 February 2026; the Fifth Circuit denied the FTC’s motion to stay the vacatur on 19 March 2026, as the firm’s own antitrust blog restated on 23 March 2026. From that date the extra front-end hours are no longer mandatory on routine filings. HSR dollar thresholds effective 17 February 2026 lifted the size-of-transaction test from $126.4 million to $133.9 million. A 10 percent reciprocal tariff landed on 5 April 2025. Treasury reported 347 CFIUS covered filings in 2025, released 7 August 2026. That stack keeps New York and Chicago corporate seats busy at $225,000–$250,000 for two-to-three-year finance; it does not require a $270,000 third-year lockstep.
Data-center load is the structural reason the D.C. real-estate senior seat exists at all. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s United States Data Center Energy Usage Report: 2025 Update, published June 2026, put 2024 U.S. data-center electricity use at 192 TWh, 4.7 percent of U.S. electricity, with a 2030 Reference Case of 649 TWh. EPRI’s 2026 Powering Intelligence executive summary lists Pennsylvania among the states taking new capacity. An eight-year data-center development seat at $375,000+ is a senior real-estate price against that load, not a junior lockstep match.
Illinois biometric privacy is the docket that got cheaper to damage and did not vanish. The Illinois Supreme Court in Cothron v. White Castle System, Inc., 17 February 2023, held that a separate BIPA claim accrues each time a private entity scans or transmits an individual’s biometric identifier, with statutory damages of $1,000 negligent and $5,000 intentional or reckless per violation. Public Act 103-0769, effective 2 August 2024, cut that arithmetic back to a single recovery per person per method. The Seventh Circuit in Clay v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., 1 April 2026, held the amendment remedial and retroactive to pending cases. Chicago labor-and-privacy mid-levels still price website-tracking and remaining per-person BIPA; the annihilative per-scan book is no longer the 2026 growth story, and it was never a reason to match New York lockstep in Chicago at $225,000–$250,000 for two-to-three-year finance.
Two other desks on the same ATS are buyer-specific rather than lockstep-generic. The firm insurance page claims more than 100 lawyers in 25 offices, observer status at the International Association of Insurance Supervisors, and a regulator map covering New York, Connecticut, California, Florida, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, plus the Federal Insurance Office and the NAIC. Coverage associates posted at $225,000–$300,000 in San Francisco and $225,000–$285,000 in Austin. The gaming page names casinos, online and mobile operators, equipment vendors, esports, private-equity funds and the financial institutions that finance them; a location-flexible gaming-litigation associate, 2–6 years, posted 29 October 2025 at $225,000–$325,000, against state Attorneys General and Gambling Commission investigations. Chambers USA 2026 ranks the firm in 39 departments. Healthcare in Pennsylvania has been ranked for 13 years, with the firm claiming more than 45 healthcare lawyers — hospitals, physicians, post-acute care, health IT and telemedicine, and a New Jersey health-system regulatory client on the Chambers profile. A healthcare-litigation senior associate, 5–6 years, any office, posted 26 February 2026 at $310,000–$350,000. Those are the live hiring labels, not the full Chambers catalogue, and they are why a mid-size cell still fills after lockstep moved.
Partner pay is a PEP figure. The ladder underneath it is not a scale.
Duane Morris partner salary, as a 2026 distribution, is not public. What is public is an ALM profits-per-equity-partner figure, a trial-heavy elevation class, a special-counsel rung, and two cheaper off-track cells in Philadelphia.
Wikipedia’s infobox, citing Law.com / ALM and retrieved 26 May 2026, lists FY2025 profits per equity partner at $1,682,000 on FY2025 gross revenue of $758,380,000. The Lawyer, 15 May 2026, restated that revenue as $758.4 million after a 9.2 percent rise from $694.2 million. PEP is distributable profit divided by equity-partner headcount. It is not a nonequity paycheck, not a 2026 draw, and not a W-2. Anyone selling it as Duane Morris partner salary is counting on the title to do work the figure cannot do. The companion frame for that distinction sits on our Am Law top-50 partner pay benchmark.
Volume seatOwnership
- Off-track staff Products and foreclosure in Philadelphia. Posted as staff attorney, expressly off the partnership track. A different cell, not a failed associate offer.
- Associate / counsel The ATS ranges this page tables. Years of specified work, local bar, sometimes an LL.M. The mid-size cell the general counsel actually matches.
- Special counsel, then partner Fourteen special-counsel elevations on the same January 2026 day as fourteen partners. Trial-heavy partnership. No published nonequity distribution.
On the same day as the 2026 partnership class, 20 January 2026, the firm elevated 14 senior associates to special counsel across Business Reorganization, Corporate, Employment, Intellectual Property, Real Estate and Trial, in nine offices including London. Special counsel is the on-platform alternative to waiting on a trial-heavy partnership class. It is not a published pay band, and this page will not invent one.
The cheaper Philadelphia cells are staff attorney. A products-liability staff attorney, 4–7 years, posted 7 January 2026 as an “off-track partnership position,” carries a target of $155,000–$185,000. A banking-related litigation staff attorney, 2–4 years, foreclosure, Philadelphia or South Jersey, posted 14 January 2026, prints two ranges in the same listing — $125,000–$150,000 and $115,000–$130,000 — which this page treats as a $115,000–$150,000 band rather than a single point. A general counsel who needs volume products or foreclosure work, and who does not need an associate title, is looking at those rows, not at $250,000–$280,000.
Historical first-year pay is dated and is not rolled forward. Above the Law, on 20 July 2021, reported that Duane Morris had raised salaries for all associates in its major markets — Philadelphia, New York, D.C. and Chicago — to $190,000. Above the Law’s transparency page for the firm, compiled in the first quarter of 2022, labeled the scale “Below Market” against a then-market of $202,500–$205,000 and listed 768 U.S. lawyers. Neither figure is 2026 pay. The 2026 public record is the ATS table in the previous section.
The West Coast bench is a capacity story, not a lockstep match. A 2 February 2026 release adding an appellate partner in Los Angeles from another Am Law 100 platform put nearly 200 attorneys across the West Coast and framed California high-stakes civil disputes and appeals as still growing. Employment laterals into Los Angeles (30 September 2025, from a national employment boutique, PAGA and class action) and San Diego (11 May 2026, wage-and-hour and representative actions) are the same demand the ATS still prices below New York. A 15 January 2026 New York corporate partner hire for Latin America capital markets named securities, debt finance and private equity as the capture sectors, and a Chicago commercial-finance posting of 8 December 2025 claimed a 200-plus-lawyer Corporate Practice Group inside the 900-lawyer marketing count. Treat 200-plus as a firm claim, not as ALM FTE, and price the Chicago seat at the $225,000–$250,000 target the listing actually printed.
Price the cell in the first conversation, or the search will reopen.
We have worked the Philadelphia associate market for 8 years, for company legal departments and mid-size platforms in trial, employment and corporate. Over the last three years we closed 23 associate searches at a 93 percent completion rate, on a typical timeline of 6 to 12 weeks.
Sartori maps Philadelphia as a dense file of practicing lawyers. That coverage is what makes a mid-size-cell shortlist tractable. It records employer, practice and seniority. It does not record whether a given associate sits on a published ATS range or on an unpublished class-year grid, because no public register does — and that is the single largest blind spot in the file when a general counsel asks us to “find someone on lockstep” without meaning the New York number.
Of 23 closed Philadelphia associate searches over three years, 14 were mid-size Am Law 80–100 platforms whose posted bases sat below the then-current lockstep; 9 were lockstep or near-lockstep seats. Across the same city’s interview cohort, 58 of 82 in-house hiring managers — general counsel, deputy general counsel, head of legal — over a 24-month window said they would price a mid-size associate against lockstep rather than match the New York cell. That is the buyer question this page is built on. It is also why legal recruiters Philadelphia hear from company legal departments after the comparison has already been made, not before.
Counter-offer incidence on this associate line is 33 percent. Of those 14 mid-size-platform files, 6 drew a lockstep-firm counter. A deputy general counsel at a regional Pennsylvania health system put the internal logic in one sentence: the compensation committee will match a posted mid-size range inside a week, and will spend a quarter arguing about a lockstep number it cannot explain to the board. Offer-to-acceptance on this line is a median of 9 working days. Hiding the lockstep gap in the first conversation does not make the 9 days shorter. It is how the file comes back.
Three composite engagements
A PE-backed healthcare platform needed a Senior Attorney with products and mass-tort years, reporting to the general counsel, based in the Philadelphia suburbs. The brief arrived as “five years, Big Law.” Rewritten against the cell, it became a four-to-five-year products associate off a $250,000–$280,000 target, offered at $265,000 against an ACC Senior Attorney median of $201,000. The file closed in 8 weeks. The prior employer counter-offered. The candidate took the in-house title anyway, because the comparison that mattered was the internal stack, not the lockstep rung.
A manufacturer with California wage-and-hour and PAGA exposure needed employment counsel who could read a notice, a cure and a split individual/representative docket. The company had budgeted a fifth-year lockstep number. The search we ran was a three-to-five-year California labor-and-employment cell at $220,000–$310,000 depending on office. The accepted offer sat at $255,000 in a Southern California seat. Timeline 10 weeks. The saving versus matching $385,000 was the entire point of the brief once someone dated the lockstep raise.
A mid-Atlantic health system tried to hire a five-year healthcare-regulatory lawyer as Associate General Counsel on a $250,000 budget and a “large law firm setting preferred” line. The candidate the committee loved was sitting on a lockstep fifth-year. The file stalled past 12 weeks, which is the top of our published band. We advised rewriting the brief onto the mid-size healthcare-litigation cell ($310,000–$350,000 for 5–6 years, any office) or onto an in-house Associate GC at the ACC median of $245,000 with a Rule 302 plan for a non-PA-barred hire. The original brief never filled. That is the uncomfortable end of a 93 percent completion rate: the searches that fail are the ones that want lockstep-trained years on a mid-size number without choosing which of those two facts to keep.
- Q1 Do you need a New York class year, or do you need the years of work the ATS named? If the honest answer is the years of work → price the posted cell. Matching lockstep from 1 July 2026 is a different product.
- Q2 Which internal title does this hire wear on day one? Attorney, Senior Attorney, Associate Counsel, Associate General Counsel. The ACC 2025 medians sit on this page. Pick one before you pick a number.
- Q3 If the seat is in Pennsylvania and the lawyer is not PA-barred, is Rule 302 in the plan? If not → you are not hiring that person into a Philadelphia company legal department, whatever the ATS range says.
- → All three answered? Then put the lockstep comparison on the first slide, name the bonus blank, and run the search on the cell you can actually approve.
The service view of this book sits on our associate recruiting page and, for the company legal department, on in-house and general counsel recruiting. The lockstep ladder this page prices against is the 2026 BigLaw associate salary scale. How a general counsel should read firm cells against internal titles, without treating either as the other, is the private practice versus in-house pay guide.
Common questions about the 2026 cells
What is the Duane Morris salary for associates in 2026?
Posted 2025–2026 target ranges run from about $115,000 for a Philadelphia staff attorney to $395,000+ for senior private-client counsel. There is no published class-year scale. Compensation is disclosed seat by seat on the firm’s own ATS as a “target annual pay” range plus discretionary bonuses, with listings dated through 6 May 2026. Mid-level products, employment, finance and secondary-city trial seats cluster at $220,000–$310,000. Treat every figure as a posted target, not a confirmed paid salary.
Does Duane Morris match the 2026 New York lockstep?
No. Most 2025–2026 posted mid-level ranges sit at $220,000–$310,000 against a fourth-to-fifth-year lockstep of $320,000–$385,000 from 1 July 2026. Milbank reset that lockstep on 2 June 2026, as reported by Law360 Pulse the same day. Philadelphia products at $250,000–$280,000, Chicago finance at $225,000–$250,000 and San Diego employment at $220,000–$250,000 are the measured cheap cells. New York senior employment at $350,000–$400,000+ is not a cheap cell. The full lockstep ladder lives on our 2026 BigLaw associate salary scale.
What is Duane Morris partner salary in 2026?
The only public partner figure is FY2025 profits per equity partner of $1,682,000, compiled by ALM and restated on Wikipedia from a 26 May 2026 retrieval of Law.com. Nonequity partner pay and a 2026 distribution are not public. FY2025 gross revenue was $758.4 million, a 9.2 percent rise from $694.2 million, as The Lawyer reported on 15 May 2026. PEP is an average of distributable profit, not a paycheck.
How should a general counsel match a Duane Morris associate?
Match the posted cell, not lockstep. ACC’s 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey, data as of 1 March 2025, puts Associate General Counsel median base at $245,000 — inside a Duane Morris mid-level Philadelphia products range of $250,000–$280,000. A fifth-year lockstep base of $385,000 from 1 July 2026 is a different product. Pennsylvania in-house hires who are not PA-barred need a Limited In-House Corporate Counsel License under 204 Pa. Code r. 302.
Is there a published Duane Morris bonus scale for 2026?
No. Careers and ATS pages through 6 May 2026 disclose discretionary bonuses and incentive packages only, with no year-end grid. Lockstep year-end bonuses of $20,000–$115,000 on Biglaw Investor’s 2026 table are the comparison market, not this firm. A cash-on-cash comparison to lockstep-plus-bonus would widen the gap; that bonus side is not measured here.
How long does a Philadelphia associate search take?
Sartori’s Philadelphia associate desk typically closes in 6 to 12 weeks, with a median of 9 working days from offer to acceptance and a 93 percent completion rate on 23 closed searches over three years. Counter-offer incidence on this line is 33 percent. We have worked this market for 8 years.
ATS ranges, ALM PEP, ACC medians, and the statutes that keep the desks busy.
Posted compensation comes from the firm’s own ATS and careers pages. Firm financials come from The Lawyer’s restatement of ALM and from Wikipedia’s Law.com citations. In-house medians come from ACC. Lockstep is dated to Milbank’s 2 June 2026 announcement, effective 1 July 2026.
ATS, ALM, ACC, NALP and the 2024–2026 dockets
45 references- Sartori & Partners — Philadelphia Legal Talent Research Programme (250 structured interviews; ~7,500 lawyers mapped; quarterly surveys since 2019; mandate telemetry) sartoriglobal.com ↗
- viDesktop — Duane Morris attorney openings (RecApplicantEmail) selfapply.duanemorris.com ↗
- viDesktop — Duane Morris attorney openings (RecDefault) selfapply.duanemorris.com ↗
- Duane Morris LLP - Careers duanemorris.com ↗
- DUANE MORRIS @ A GLANCE (June 2026) duanemorris.com ↗
- Duane Morris LLP - About Duane Morris duanemorris.com ↗
- Invisible No Longer? Duane Morris Sets Sights on London’s US Ranks (The Lawyer, May 15, 2026) duanemorris.com ↗
- Duane Morris - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org ↗
- Duane Morris – Law Firm Profile | ILRG ilrg.com ↗
- Milbank Raises Associate Pay Scale, Topping Out At $455K (Law360 Pulse, June 2, 2026) law360.com ↗
- ALERT: Milbank Does It Again — Associate Salaries Are Going Up!!! (Above the Law, June 2, 2026) abovethelaw.com ↗
- Biglaw Salary Scale + Bonuses (1968 - 2026) biglawinvestor.com ↗
- Despite Expectations, $225,000 Entry Associate Salaries Lag at Large Law Firms (NALP, May 28, 2025) nalp.org ↗
- Starting law firm associate pay has been flat since 2023, NALP reports (Reuters, May 28, 2025) reuters.com ↗
- 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey Executive Summary (ACC / Empsight) acc.com ↗
- 204 Pa. Code r. 302 Limited In-House Corporate Counsel License law.cornell.edu ↗
- Duane Morris Names 14 Attorneys to Partnership (January 20, 2026) duanemorris.com ↗
- Duane Morris Elevates 14 Attorneys to Special Counsel (January 20, 2026) duanemorris.com ↗
- Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2025 duanemorris.com ↗
- Duane Morris LLP, USA 2026 | Chambers Profiles chambers.com ↗
- AB-2288 Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 leginfo.legislature.ca.gov ↗
- Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Servs. (U.S. Supreme Court, June 5, 2025) supremecourt.gov ↗
- Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity (EO 14173, January 21, 2025) whitehouse.gov ↗
- PFAS National Primary Drinking Water Regulation (Federal Register, April 26, 2024) federalregister.gov ↗
- Old HSR Form Returns as Fifth Circuit Rejects FTC’s Bid (Duane Morris Antitrust Law Blog, March 23, 2026) blogs.duanemorris.com ↗
- United States Data Center Energy Usage Report: 2025 Update (LBNL, June 2026) eta.lbl.gov ↗
- Philadelphia Biglaw Firms Get On Board With Raises For Associates (Above the Law, July 20, 2021) abovethelaw.com ↗
- Duane Morris - Above the Law (Q1 2022 data) abovethelaw.com ↗
- Incoming Chair of ELBI (September 8, 2025) duanemorris.com ↗
- Cothron v. White Castle System, Inc., 2023 IL 128004 law.justia.com ↗
- Public Act 103-0769 (BIPA single-recovery amendment) ilga.gov ↗
- Clay v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. (7th Cir., April 1, 2026) govinfo.gov ↗
- Insurance - Corporate and Regulatory | Duane Morris duanemorris.com ↗
- Healthcare | Chambers USA Profile (USA Guide 2026) chambers.com ↗
- Duane Morris Adds Appellate Partner in Los Angeles (February 2, 2026) duanemorris.com ↗
- Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana (June 15, 2022) supremecourt.gov ↗
- Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc. (Cal. Supreme Court, July 17, 2023) courts.ca.gov ↗
- Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (June 29, 2023) supremecourt.gov ↗
- Revised Jurisdictional Thresholds for Section 7A of the Clayton Act govinfo.gov ↗
- Treasury Releases CFIUS Annual Report for 2025 (August 7, 2026) home.treasury.gov ↗
- Duane Morris Employment Group Recognized as a Practice Group of the Year by Law360 (February 10, 2026) duanemorris.com ↗
- Trial | Duane Morris duanemorris.com ↗
- Gaming | Duane Morris duanemorris.com ↗
- Regulating Imports with a Reciprocal Tariff (April 2, 2025) whitehouse.gov ↗
- In-House Counsel Committee | Pennsylvania Bar Association pabar.org ↗
Posted ranges are employer-stated targets, not salaries paid. PEP is an ALM ratio for fiscal 2025, not a 2026 partner distribution. The 2026 New York lockstep is a comparison cell; the class-year table lives on the BigLaw scale page. Bonus language on Duane Morris pages is discretionary only. Firm marketing headcount (more than 900 lawyers) is not the ALM/ILRG FTE series (about 740–750). Interview-cohort and mapping figures are separate instruments and are never added.
Our own numbers — the Philadelphia interview cohort, the 23 closed associate searches, counter-offer incidence, the offer-to-acceptance window and the completion rate — come from the continuous research program described on our research page.
Adjacent benchmarks for the same two readers.
BigLaw associate salary scale 2026
The New York lockstep this page prices against — $235,000 first-year through $455,000 eighth-year from 1 July 2026.
Read the 2026 lockstepPrivate practice vs in-house pay
How a general counsel should read a firm cell against an internal title, without treating lockstep as the in-house rate.
Compare the two laddersWhat Am Law partners actually make
Why PEP is not a paycheck — the frame for reading Duane Morris FY2025 profits per equity partner.
Read the PEP benchmarkA quiet conversation
Price the hire against the cell, not against lockstep.
We map Philadelphia associate and in-house talent against posted mid-size cells, and we are as willing to tell you a requisition is a lockstep brief on a mid-size budget as to open a search. Confidential, no obligation.