<p>sunfish beat me to it, but i was going to use baseball.</p>
<p>law firms want top talent, you have to pay for it when you’re competing with each other, and with public sector, public interest, and small firm alternatives. more generally, people are rarely paid exactly what they are worth. in general, people go through a productive arc, peaking in production in their middle years when training is complete but skill deterioration hasn’t set in. people are rarely paid based on this skills arc, they are generally overpaid upon entry and prior to exit; but underpaid in their most productive years. law firm associates are paid a ton of money because they will make the firm a ton of money down the road once their skills have matured. you can see this arc play out in the sports analogy, where draft picks are paid highly, the early productive years go underpaid [derrick rose], players in their prime demand long backloaded contracts [joe johnson] and typically end up being dead weight on their team’s payroll in their later years [alfonso soriano]. </p>
<p>put another way, first year associate pay may only be too much if you discount the future. i can’t imagine a business forking over that kind of cash to a bunch of people that aren’t even going to make the cut 5 years down the line unless they have to.</p>
<p>apologies for any redundancy.</p>