My firm talks a big game about pay transparency, but all it’s really done is expose how uneven things are. Associates with the same title are on completely different packages, and when people see the gaps, resentment builds fast. The problem is, we can point out the inequity, but leadership doesn’t move to fix it. Do you think pay transparency in law actually helps, or does it just fuel frustration?

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I feel that the answer lies in your explanation itself: all it's really done is EXPOSE how uneven things are. That is to say: the valuations are real and have already been made. The issue is the real state of affairs which would exist regardless of anyone's knowledge of it.

It certainly does fuel frustration to realize that somebody thinks you are less valuable than someone else. That is the categorical field that leadership has placed themselves in; they have created that circumstance of their own volition. If they so consciously made this decision, I should think they would also be capable of justifying or rectifying it.

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It sounds like the “transparency” you wanted was actually just a ruse for making sure there wasn’t a meritocracy. Unfortunately, that’s life.

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Oh, absolutely. But it takes hiring reasonable, virtuous and meritocratic people. Even the ones who make less.

It helps but it causes frustration at first. The transparency can cause things to even out over the years because the bottom lines and the stepping stones are knowable.

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Pay transparency is one of the main reasons BigLaw pays so much. It’s a uniform and extremely transparent scale, to the point where if you tell me when someone graduated I can tell you exactly how much they get paid to the penny. The second any firm tries to screw anyone, and the second any major firm increases pay for anyone, it gets leaked and widely reported all over legal social media and the legal press. This is what forces firms to match the “scale.”

If not for that, I 100% guarantee that many individual associates within each firm would be getting paid a lot less, specific offices within a firm would get less, and most firms would pay less than other firms.

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I think transparency about a mathematically justified system is the only thing I'd want to set up, if I were in charge. It can't really be that hard.

I also think expectations are actually even more important to satisfaction in our industry. People have a lot of anxiety when they don't know what could happen or why, sometimes with 100K on the line or more.

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