By ALLISSA KLINE
Business First

The starting salary for new lawyers in Buffalo is rising, especially at the city's largest corporate law firms.

At least two of Buffalo's top law firms are now paying a salary of $90,000 to new hires, while some midsized firms have boosted associates' salaries by a few thousand dollars.

But that doesn't mean Buffalo lawyers are an exorbitantly paid group. Overall attorney compensation remains below the state average, according to results from a survey conducted by the Buffalo Law Journal and the Western New York chapter of the Women's Bar Association of the State of New York.

About 66 percent of survey respondents said they earn between $56,000 and $125,000 a year. Statewide, the average annual wage for lawyers is $130,060, according to wage data compiled by the New York State Department of Labor.

"I guess that suggests to me that ... the competition for lawyers in Western New York is probably depressed from other major markets," said Kenneth Krajewski, a managing partner at Brown & Kelly LLP who reviewed the survey results. "Then again, $56,000 to $125,000 in Buffalo is not bad money."

Nearly 20 percent of respondents earn between $101,000 and $125,000 annually, results show. Another 17 percent say they earn between $86,000 to $100,000 a year.

Those numbers fall drastically short of attorney salaries in other cities such as New York City and Washington, D.C., where the starting-associate salary alone has climbed to $160,000 within the past two years, said James Leipold, executive director at the National Association for Law Placement, which conducts annual surveys of associate-level compensation.

"We have more places paying at those higher salaries, but really the secondary markets have not been able to go there," Leipold said. "Most people who start in private practice don't make $160,000, even though that's caught all of the attention of the press."

Besides large cities, Buffalo's legal market also falls behind places such as Pittsburgh and Detroit, where the median salary for new associates is $110,000 and $100,000 respectively, the NALP said. Salaries in Columbus, Ohio - at $88,750 for first-year attorneys - are probably closer to Buffalo's market, the NALP said.

The NALP planned to analyze Buffalo's first-year salaries, but said that research could not be conducted because too few responses were received.

But the pay scale is sliding up. Within the past year, the two largest law firms in Buffalo - Hodgson Russ LLP and Phillips Lytle LLP - bumped their starting pay from $85,000 to $90,000. Brown & Kelly, a midsized firm, increased its starting associate salary from $38,000 to $42,500.

The reason? Competitive forces in the marketplace, both locally and regionally, the firms said.

"We have to pay these salaries to make sure we get the best and brightest law students getting out of school," Hodgson Russ president and CEO Gary Schober said.

That means attracting and retaining law-school students like Karla Braun-Kolbe, who joined Phillips Lytle two years ago after graduating from the University at Buffalo Law School. During her first year as an associate, the Williamsville native earned roughly $80,000, one of the highest starting salaries in the area at that time.

But Braun-Kolbe said compensation wasn't a big factor in her decision to join Phillips Lytle.

"That wasn't my primary consideration," she said. "I was looking for a larger firm and I wanted opportunities to do different kinds of work."

Phillips Lytle managing partner David McNamara said the Buffalo legal market and its associate salaries - whether $90,000 or half of that - are in line with the region's current economic capacity.

"There are limits to what clients, particularly in the local market, are able to tolerate by way of billing rates, and that impacts firms' abilities to increase associates' salaries," he said. "I think it's going to take Buffalo quite a while to get (to New York City salary rate levels)."