BigLaw is getting squeezed by its clients. There are increasing numbers of companies that don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars an hour for fresh grads no matter how bright. That leaves law firms with the choice of either subsidizing young associates, which is dangerous given the competition for top partners, or finding some way to cut pay. While few have wanted to break away from marquee associate pay, the quiet rise of staff attorneys at BigLaw represents the breakdown of the bimodal system.
I know a relatively new lawyer that moved from a top law firm in NYC to a tech firm on the west coast and got a huge increase in pay, especially per hour worked.
Getting a rise per hour worked in law by leaving the big law firms is often "easy". My ex worked for one of the top lawfirms in London, and quickly realised their very high headline pay (straight out of uni into ~2x median UK pay, and increasing at far above average rates for 10+ years) gave the new graduates lower per-hour pay than their secretaries.
It was basically a death-march to see who'd stick it out long enough. Only a few would make partner anyway, so they needed to shed a lot of people to make their cost structure work, and so they'd work them into the ground and use who stays as the selection method at the lower end.
