What are we worth?

Kevin's musings on the evolution of open source model to include legal counseling reminded me of yet another article in the New York Times from Sept 1^st entitled "For New Lawyers the Going Rate Has Gone Up.” Once again the starting salaries of first year associates a major law firms have gone up,m and while I don't think any of us recient or upcoming graduates are complaining, it is interesting to note the role that technology and the rapid availability of available information has played in all of this.

The article indicates that “In this age of instant communication, it didn’t take long for word of [one firm’s decision to raise salaries] to spread. Associates heard of the increases via BlackBerry and text messaging as well as from legal publications and websites like vault.com and greedyassociates.com.” Word spread rapidly and competing firms raised their salaries to match. Pro bono work aside, the Law Underground and major law firms have distinct target markets, so at the very least I think us budding attorneys can take certain clients' willingness to pay several hundred dollars an hour for our time to be an indication that that attorney's are not on their way to becoming obsolete. Nonetheless, it’s kind of funny how technology so integral to the dissemination of information is being used both in an attempt to remedy the injustice of exorbitant legal fees, but at the same time contributes to their rising cost.