New first-year associates at Howrey, which has a 54-lawyer office in Houston, will spend more time learning to be litigators and less time on billable hours during their first two years on the job. However, the firm will pay them less than the law school graduates who started work as first-year associates last fall at the $160,000 market rate. Washington, D.C.-based Howrey today announced its Tier 1 Associate Program, which will apply to the 23 new associates in the Class of 2009 slated to start work on Sept. 28. The program calls for first-year associates to spend one-third of their time on billable work, and the rest of it on pro bono work and training. They will be paid a $100,000 annual salary and receive a $25,000 acceptance bonus. During their second year on the job, the associates will spend about half of their time on billable work, and the training offerings will include client secondments and judical externships. The second-year associates will earn an annual salary of $125,000 and a $25,000 bonus at the end of that year. The firm will also adjust its billing rates for the first-year associates in the Tier 1 program to about $150 an hour, down from about $275, and for second-year lawyers to about $200 from about $300, says Bob Ruyak, the firm’s chairman and chief executive officer. “The idea is to make them more valuable to clients,” Ruyak says about the heavier emphasis on training. “About a year ago, I started talking to clients and other lawyers in the firm about whether we should change the method of how we initiate lawyers into the practice. . . .” he says. “Part of our goal here is to select really good people and really train them to be trial lawyers.” The Tier 1 Associate Program will not affect the compensation of current Howrey associates, although the firm did move away from a lock-step system last year. Ruyak says 98 percent of its practice is trial work.
-- Brenda Sapino Jeffreys
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