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Anyone else experiencing pencils down?
NRF matched Millbank in TX yesterday
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Texas has a lot of big law firms that pay market. If you're not making market, renegotiate.
Negotiate.
It depends where you’re living in Houston, but overall biglaw employers pay more in Houston than NC. It’s not uncommon for biglaw associates to earn Cravath scale (or whatever top of market is now) pay, though firms vary. I’m not sure where you’re looking to live, but many areas (ie, the close to downtown, inner loop areas) are expensive real estate. So while Houston may overall average out at slightly lower than Raleigh when you account for some of the far flung suburbs, make sure you know where your looking to move for a real comparable. Property taxes are high and a long commute sucks. We chose a very expensive close in neighborhood because the public schools (HISD) here are excellent but many people choose private schools (if you have or plan to have kids).
Hi A1 - welcome to Houston! The HISD system is daunting. Feel free to PM if you want to talk specifics and I can give you some of the ratings and ranking sites/groups I know of.
Before the pandemic, the district would host “school choice fairs” on Saturdays where all the schools with lottery/magnet programs would set up information booths and you could walk around and learn about them - my son went several times to gather his “research” for middle school. Now, a lot of it is online (HISD school choice finder can be helpful).
Overall, I recommend talking to the parents with kids enrolled in the schools where you may want your child to attend (most schools have parent Facebook groups or PTA pages). In my experience, some people “rate” a school on a reputation long since past while other schools that have made amazing strides in the last 5 years or so don’t get enough credit.
HISD is geographically huge, so I always advise to first decide what area(s) of town you may want to live go from there. Keep in mind if you magnet you’ll have to figure how to get the kiddo to and from that school and if it’s on the other side of town traffic is no joke; the district does bus for magnet students, but it can be a pain.
I don’t know anything about Raleigh, but if you’re planning to live near downtown housing prices are crazy right now. Property tax here is higher than most other states, and HISD schools are garbage so if you have kids you’d probably want to put them in private school - maybe use those as negotiation points/justification for a raise.
If this is big law, you are definitely already getting a major pay jump since you are moving from a small market to a major legal market. Are you not big law?
Don't want to beat a dead horse too much but you should negotiate. I'm from Raleigh and have a brother who practices there still so I know that only a few firms pay Cravath there. In Houston many firms pay scale so it would only make sense you're paid accordingly.