There's been a lot of hubbub lately about increases in law firm associate pay. But is there also some upward pressure on how much summer associates are raking in?

At the end of July, ALM Intelligence—a division of ALM Media—released the results of its annual summer associate hiring survey, which shows some signs of rising summer associate pay.

Among the 67 Am Law 200 and Global 100 firms that disclosed pay for both the 2017 and 2018 surveys, the average weekly salary inched up from $3,308 in 2017 to $3,322 in 2018. But five firms increased pay by more than 5 percent year-on-year: Nixon Peabody, Dorsey & Whitney, Faegre Baker Daniels, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, and Duane Morris.

Five firms increased summer associate pay by more than 5 percent

 

Nixon Peabody, for instance, upped its pay by more than 40 percent to $3,462, according to the survey. Now, keep in mind this figure is for weekly pay, and it's the average for the firm as well. That means, in theory, that a few well-paid summer associates could skew the results.

Some additional context is also helpful. The firms listed above reported relatively smaller summer associate class sizes. That suggests it may be hard to extrapolate much from those increases.

If we look at the full slate of respondents in 2018, the biggest class sizes are at the firms you might expect: Latham & Watkins (204 summer associates); Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (203); and Davis Polk & Wardell (179).

By comparison, Nixon Peabody reported just 13 summer associates in its class this year; Dorsey & Whitney had 25; and Faegre Baker had 46. OK, so maybe there's not a trend after all?

But take a look at the graph below, which compares 55 firms that have given summer associate pay over the past three years – 2016, 2017, and 2018. It indicates that the pay spread is narrowing and converging at a higher figure—even if the overall maximum hasn't increased.

The annual ALM Intelligence Summer Hiring Survey polls all firms in the AmLaw 200 and a select number of Global 100 firms; for 2018, 91 firms provided hiring and pay data. Stay tuned for additional analysis in the October issue of The American Lawyer or obtain the full dataset from ALM Intelligence.