Are biglaw associates wildly underpaid? Forum

[Tiago Splitter]

1. Biglaw hiring for class of 2013 was up 10% from 2010 and 2012 and up 30% from class of 2011 so let's not write the obituary just yet.

2. As I said earlier, my firm was also very transparent. They told us they break even on first years at 1400. The average is just under 2000. So each of those $450 billables between 1400 and 2000 is pure profit.

[JamMasterJ]

1. Biglaw hiring for class of 2013 was up 10% from 2010 and 2012 and up 30% from class of 2011 so let's not write the obituary just yet.

2. As I said earlier, my firm was also very transparent. They told us they break even on first years at 1400. The average is just under 2000. So each of those $450 billables between 1400 and 2000 is pure profit.

are they referencing 1400 hours that you bill or 1400 that they actually get paid for?

[Tiago Splitter]

1. Biglaw hiring for class of 2013 was up 10% from 2010 and 2012 and up 30% from class of 2011 so let's not write the obituary just yet.

2. As I said earlier, my firm was also very transparent. They told us they break even on first years at 1400. The average is just under 2000. So each of those $450 billables between 1400 and 2000 is pure profit.

are they referencing 1400 hours that you bill or 1400 that they actually get paid for?

I assume anything they don't get paid for doesn't do much for the bottom line.

Also, regarding secretaries, usually there are 3-5 attorneys sharing a secretary. Same with associates sharing office space, needing the same number of recruiters to bring in 40 vs. 50, etc. Firms tell you they break even at 1400 or whatever but each additional associate creates little more cost than their salary.

[Anonymous User]

I haven't read the entire thread, but I'd like to set some things straight.

My old firm was VERY transparent with us and showed us a breakdown of where the money goes. You are not underpaid, you're grossly overpaid. Year 3, firms break even. Year 5 is where you start making serious money for the firm. Clueless juniors think "Duh, I get billed out at $200 and I only make like 160K and I bill 2200 hours so damn, I'm getting underpaid, they made way more than $160K off me!" These people A.) don't know math, B.) don't understand how business works and C.) are very ignorant. So, here is how things actually work. Your insurance, training, secretary support, malpractice, supplies, CLEs, etc etc etc etc etc, all that is stuff your firm is paying for. Got a secretary? Guess what, thats a ton of cash the firm wouldn't need if you weren't around. All those things add up. More importantly, do you honestly think your little 2200 @ $200 is what the firm actually MAKES off you? I don't think anyone is so ignorant as to say that with a straight face. I worked on a case for a big international company and after I was done my firm showed me the bill and how it broke down. All I saw was a ton of crossed out lines and a bunch of typed out "Will not cover research" and "Will not cover first year associates". This is a client's market, clients just pay what they want now. Many times they just refuse to pay for ANY work that a first year does, and your firm has to sit there and just deal with it cause that client will have 40 firms lining up at the door to take over for you if you bitch about it. Out of your 2200 hours billed your firm is lucky to pull in 1500 off you. Now, and this is my favorite part, your firm is SUPPOSED to make more money than what they pay you. This is how a business works. What do you want, a firm to give you your nice office, pay for all your stuff, give you experience and training, and then give you all the money you made from clients without making a dime? They need to PROFIT off of you, thats why you are there.

I could write 17 more paragraphs on this, but you get the point. No, you're not underpaid, stop bitching.

Even assuming this is all true for the firm you worked at, this is highly firm-specific, and it doesn't apply everywhere.

At the firm I work for, controls have been put in place to prevent bill-write-downs of the sort you describe here. Usually the firm will negotiate with a client beforehand to make it clear which tasks the client will and will not pay for. Notations are then made in the billing software that say things like "client will not pay for background research" or "client will not pay for internal meetings" and associates are precluded from billing under those codes to ensure that all hours billed will actually be paid for.

Additionally, the firm introduced management controls on bill write-downs; lone partners are no longer empowered to simply write down a client's bill without conferring with managing partners and getting sign-off. This has resulted in partners negotiating with clients pre-work in order to get some kind of psuedo-fixed-fee sign-off which is then passed along to the associates. Usually this will look something like "The client has signed off on the reply brief taking 10 hours. If it's going to take longer let me know why and we'll see what we can do." Again, this creates a situation where the associates are not billing hours that will be written-down, specifically because the client has previously agreed to pay for some minimum number of hours. It's not entirely fixed fee because I have seen the hours go up where the associate found genuine novelty in the assignment that necessitated more work.

Now, to be fair, these controls on write-downs have lead to some actions of questionable ethics; at the extreme I actually know of a partner that "helped" an associate to "better describe" some of the associate's time under a billing code the client would actually pay for. Likewise, there's a partner in my office that associates actively dodge work from because he's known for promising totally unrealistic hours totals to clients (e.g. "Yeah, a motion to dismiss can be cranked out from scratch in 5 hours!"). Associates also obviously get burned when they are told that they can only bill a max of 10 hours on a project that legitimately takes 15 to complete, and this definitely drives down quality-of-life by increasing the hours-worked-to-hours-billed ratio. However, the result is that billed hours are actualized at a rate approaching 100%.

I only have real experience with the one firm (hence why this is anonymous - if they're really the only ones doing this I don't want to out them), but it's hard for me to believe that other firms haven't put similar controls in place to prevent exactly what you are describing.

[2014]

I haven't read the entire thread, but I'd like to set some things straight.

My old firm was VERY transparent with us and showed us a breakdown of where the money goes. You are not underpaid, you're grossly overpaid. Year 3, firms break even. Year 5 is where you start making serious money for the firm. Clueless juniors think "Duh, I get billed out at $200 and I only make like 160K and I bill 2200 hours so damn, I'm getting underpaid, they made way more than $160K off me!" These people A.) don't know math, B.) don't understand how business works and C.) are very ignorant. So, here is how things actually work. Your insurance, training, secretary support, malpractice, supplies, CLEs, etc etc etc etc etc, all that is stuff your firm is paying for. Got a secretary? Guess what, thats a ton of cash the firm wouldn't need if you weren't around. All those things add up. More importantly, do you honestly think your little 2200 @ $200 is what the firm actually MAKES off you? I don't think anyone is so ignorant as to say that with a straight face. I worked on a case for a big international company and after I was done my firm showed me the bill and how it broke down. All I saw was a ton of crossed out lines and a bunch of typed out "Will not cover research" and "Will not cover first year associates". This is a client's market, clients just pay what they want now. Many times they just refuse to pay for ANY work that a first year does, and your firm has to sit there and just deal with it cause that client will have 40 firms lining up at the door to take over for you if you bitch about it. Out of your 2200 hours billed your firm is lucky to pull in 1500 off you. Now, and this is my favorite part, your firm is SUPPOSED to make more money than what they pay you. This is how a business works. What do you want, a firm to give you your nice office, pay for all your stuff, give you experience and training, and then give you all the money you made from clients without making a dime? They need to PROFIT off of you, thats why you are there.

I could write 17 more paragraphs on this, but you get the point. No, you're not underpaid, stop bitching.

Lol @ your firm billing you out at $200 an hour

[Neal Patrick Harris]

If the cost/associate is really that different between firms (some first years worth @1400, while others break even with third years), why don't the firms that use associates more efficient pay more?

The inefficient firms couldn't afford to match and boom, competitive advantage for the efficient firm.

[OneMoreLawHopeful]

If the cost/associate is really that different between firms (some first years worth @1400, while others break even with third years), why don't the firms that use associates more efficient pay more?

The inefficient firms couldn't afford to match and boom, competitive advantage for the efficient firm.

Many times they do, either by a lot (e.g. Wachtell, Williams & Connolly, Boies, etc.), or by a little (K&E, arguably Quinn though this is TLS so Quinn bonuses are TTT).

It's also arguable that at many of these firms partnership is still a very real prospect and that might be a form of higher compensation.

But there are two big problems. First, there's no real competition because we're talking about such a small number of employers (American Lawyer pegged the number of firms in this category at 20). You can literally be the best associate in the world, and worth millions to any employer, but if you already work at Wachtell, you're not really ever going to do better compensation-wise. Without more competition at the top (e.g. the guy working at Wachtell can't threaten to go elsewhere for higher pay) salaries will never been driven up.

Second, there's a real signalling problem. The "average" associate at S&C is worth $785k to the firm (according to the link I posted above). This means that some are worth a great deal more, and some are worth a great deal less. A peer firm like Skadden MIGHT (this is a big if - there's no way to know) be willing to pay the guy worth more than $785k quite a bit more than lockstep to hire him away from S&C. But how can Skadden tell, in advance, whether the associate is over-performing or under-performing? Indeed, if he's in the lateral market AT ALL that might signal that S&C doesn't want him around given the prevalence of "up-or-out." Since S&C is more likely to force out an under-performer than an over-performer, arguably Skadden would never offer more than lockstep because someone leaving S&C is disproportionately likely to be under performing. Because there's no credible way for an S&C associate to signal to Skadden "Hey, I'm actually an overperformer and would happily leave if you offered me more cash!" the market mechanism is essentially broken and salaries won't be bid upwards.

[lacrossebrother]

Ya well the way you beat signaling problems is with incentive based pay. Like bonuses. And those exist.

[sublime]

..

[lacrossebrother]

Ok well signaling isn't a problem if you have the ability to get around it and choose not to.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

This topic has already been done to death; I thought we had reached a conclusion.

Let's say your overhead is 1:1. That's the minimum I've ever heard, but let's be conservative and hold it there. If you bill 2000 hours and cost $330k (salary, overheard and bonus), then you need to bill $165/hour to break even (that's assuming a 100% realization rate, which no one has). And first-years do bill in excess of that. But, as has been said earlier ITT, nobody is paying for the work of a first year. They're paying for the senior associate and partner to be over your shoulder, correcting all your fuckups. And for a lot of clients, that's not even enough. So maybe "you" bill $350/hour, but what percent of your hours billed generated mistakes that others had to fix with non-billable time? That bill isn't really "yours" until you can complete assignments entirely independently. The fifth-year associate who can complete an assignment without hand holding really is worth what he bills, so I don't see any reason to doubt the consensus that senior associates are really the underpaid ones. But in order to be independently useful, the firm has to spend years training you/fixing your fuckups, and senior associates have to subsidize not only that but also the hordes who leave after 2-3 years when their debt hits zero, or they have a baby and want a 9-5 or whatever. Considering the risk that an associate leaves before he/she ever gets competent enough to be trusted on his/her own, $160k is almost certainly an overpay--a selling point/up-front ability to keep you around until your profitable years.

If you think you're underpaid, try opening your own shop. You'll get to really find out how much marketing is worth. Let me know how much clients pay for the work of a first-year and only a first-year.

[PepperJack]

This topic has already been done to death; I thought we had reached a conclusion.

Let's say your overhead is 1:1. That's the minimum I've ever heard, but let's be conservative and hold it there. If you bill 2000 hours and cost $330k (salary, overheard and bonus), then you need to bill $165/hour to break even (that's assuming a 100% realization rate, which no one has). And first-years do bill in excess of that. But, as has been said earlier ITT, nobody is paying for the work of a first year. They're paying for the senior associate and partner to be over your shoulder, correcting all your fuckups. And for a lot of clients, that's not even enough. So maybe "you" bill $350/hour, but what percent of your hours billed generated mistakes that others had to fix with non-billable time? That bill isn't really "yours" until you can complete assignments entirely independently. The fifth-year associate who can complete an assignment without hand holding really is worth what he bills, so I don't see any reason to doubt the consensus that senior associates are really the underpaid ones. But in order to be independently useful, the firm has to spend years training you/fixing your fuckups, and senior associates have to subsidize not only that but also the hordes who leave after 2-3 years when their debt hits zero, or they have a baby and want a 9-5 or whatever. Considering the risk that an associate leaves before he/she ever gets competent enough to be trusted on his/her own, $160k is almost certainly an overpay--a selling point/up-front ability to keep you around until your profitable years.

If you think you're underpaid, try opening your own shop. You'll get to really find out how much marketing is worth. Let me know how much clients pay for the work of a first-year and only a first-year.

Is the overhead 1:1?

[dixiecupdrinking]

If the cost/associate is really that different between firms (some first years worth @1400, while others break even with third years), why don't the firms that use associates more efficient pay more?

The inefficient firms couldn't afford to match and boom, competitive advantage for the efficient firm.

Because salaries have nothing to do with firm profitability and everything to do with the associate employment market. There's no incentive for a firm to raise salaries when they can just pocket the difference with no consequence.

This gets to the heart of the matter. Is your labor worth what they have to pay you for it or what it does for their bottom line? There's no right answer, but the point is that you can be very profitable for your firm without being "underpaid" in a normative sense.

It is a little rich that young associates, who are by and large profiting off the hegemony of American capitalism-as-religion, think they should be judged by how much value they add instead of how little their employers can get away with paying them.

[PepperJack]

If the cost/associate is really that different between firms (some first years worth @1400, while others break even with third years), why don't the firms that use associates more efficient pay more?

The inefficient firms couldn't afford to match and boom, competitive advantage for the efficient firm.

Because salaries have nothing to do with firm profitability and everything to do with the associate employment market. There's no incentive for a firm to raise salaries when they can just pocket the difference with no consequence.

This gets to the heart of the matter. Is your labor worth what they have to pay you for it or what it does for their bottom line? There's no right answer, but the point is that you can be very profitable for your firm without being "underpaid" in a normative sense.

It is a little rich that young associates, who are by and large profiting off the hegemony of American capitalism-as-religion, think they should be judged by how much value they add instead of how little their employers can get away with paying them.

The salary for big law vs. the rest of the private sector is so bimodal that if it wasn't for prestige whoring, nobody would be making 160k. What's the profitability of a 500/week lawyer in a solo shop where the solo has a yacht?

[dixiecupdrinking]

If the cost/associate is really that different between firms (some first years worth @1400, while others break even with third years), why don't the firms that use associates more efficient pay more?

The inefficient firms couldn't afford to match and boom, competitive advantage for the efficient firm.

Because salaries have nothing to do with firm profitability and everything to do with the associate employment market. There's no incentive for a firm to raise salaries when they can just pocket the difference with no consequence.

This gets to the heart of the matter. Is your labor worth what they have to pay you for it or what it does for their bottom line? There's no right answer, but the point is that you can be very profitable for your firm without being "underpaid" in a normative sense.

It is a little rich that young associates, who are by and large profiting off the hegemony of American capitalism-as-religion, think they should be judged by how much value they add instead of how little their employers can get away with paying them.

The salary for big law vs. the rest of the private sector is so bimodal that if it wasn't for prestige whoring, nobody would be making 160k. What's the profitability of a 500/week lawyer in a solo shop where the solo has a yacht?

Well, it's prestige whoring in a sense, but biglaw firms aren't wrong that if they just started hiring whoever would work for the least money, they would eventually lose the cachet that makes clients hire them in the first place.

[PepperJack]

I'm not saying outsourcing to India is the way to go. Having a great law school or law review next to every attorney's bio undoubtedly has value when prospective clients peruse the website. But if the salary dropped at all big law firms by 20% would candidates with great credentials stop choosing to work in big law?

[wanderer]

This topic has already been done to death; I thought we had reached a conclusion.

Let's say your overhead is 1:1. That's the minimum I've ever heard, but let's be conservative and hold it there. If you bill 2000 hours and cost $330k (salary, overheard and bonus), then you need to bill $165/hour to break even (that's assuming a 100% realization rate, which no one has). And first-years do bill in excess of that. But, as has been said earlier ITT, nobody is paying for the work of a first year. They're paying for the senior associate and partner to be over your shoulder, correcting all your fuckups. And for a lot of clients, that's not even enough. So maybe "you" bill $350/hour, but what percent of your hours billed generated mistakes that others had to fix with non-billable time? That bill isn't really "yours" until you can complete assignments entirely independently. The fifth-year associate who can complete an assignment without hand holding really is worth what he bills, so I don't see any reason to doubt the consensus that senior associates are really the underpaid ones. But in order to be independently useful, the firm has to spend years training you/fixing your fuckups, and senior associates have to subsidize not only that but also the hordes who leave after 2-3 years when their debt hits zero, or they have a baby and want a 9-5 or whatever. Considering the risk that an associate leaves before he/she ever gets competent enough to be trusted on his/her own, $160k is almost certainly an overpay--a selling point/up-front ability to keep you around until your profitable years.

If you think you're underpaid, try opening your own shop. You'll get to really find out how much marketing is worth. Let me know how much clients pay for the work of a first-year and only a first-year.

While I disagree with most of this, I'll agree that actually generating business is a kick in the ass. I brought in my first "big" client a month ago, and I spent 3 fucking days running conflict checks, calling other attorneys at the firm about the potential conflicts that came up to see if they're something we need a waiver for, drafting waivers, talking to these people with questions about the waivers, drafting the retainer letter, etc. All to do about $25,000 worth of work. I used to seethe when I saw how low some partners' hours were compared to mine. Now I think "fuck, I'd prefer to just do the work and collect my paycheck, and let these boomer partners hobnob all day trying to bring the work in."

On the rest of this post, I think this "junior associate time is written off in droves!"/"your time is worthless because someone else checks it" is bullshit. I'm in biglaw, and I've never had less than 90% of my time paid for. The dude who reviews my work? He bills all his time too, and his time gets paid before mine. It's a business, so it doesn't piss me off that the firm is making money off my work, but I hate when some clown comes out and says "You aren't considering the overhead! No one pays for juniors!" Well I see what gets paid, and 90% of my time gets paid. I'll give them overhead to an extent, but when I'm bringing in 3-5 times my salary, then I'm in the black and we all know it.

I'll admit that there are 2-3 associates I know of that have a lot of their time written off. Unfortunately, they have the reputation of being shitty attorneys. This means that (1) the people reviewing their time assumes the time is too high for the task and are therefore inclined to write the time off and (2) the 2-3 attorneys don't have the same ability to be selective on the cases they work on--they can't turn down work because only a handful of partners will still give them work. That isn't the case for at least 50 other associates I've talked to about this.

When my time is written off, I stop taking work on the case. In fact, one time I was bitching about my time being written off on a certain case to a major partner that I work with, and he told me never to do any work for that client again, and we have enough work so that we don't have to do pro bono for some Fortune 500 company. I'll point out that my bonus is tied to collections, so my motivation is to move to where the money is. If you're at a lockstep bonus firm, then I guess it doesn't matter for you.

As to overpaid vs. underpaid -- if lawyers want another job, many can go get one. I thought hard about taking a non-law job tied to my undergrad degree once, because it paid okay (over 100k), and sounded fun. In the end, the little bit of more money kept me where I am. It's a trade off, but I don't feel underpaid for what I'm doing. Also, it is a peculiar market indeed where there is such a huge disparity in first year pay, and career advancement is so heavily tied to the name of your school and first employer. NASA has (had) engineers from Ohio Northern. Same with the other super-selective employers of engineers that I know of. I'm certain that firms could let their guard down some and provide the same quality to their clients while saving some on fees by hiring some Pace students. But it's the world we live in. If anyone is going to change it, it's probably the McLaw firms--the ones that have their name out there because they're BIG, not necessarily for being elite. If DLA Piper had a bunch of median Pace kids, they'd still bring in work because clients recognize the name, they'd still win cases and sufficiently paper deals, and grade and school leniency might make it possible for them to pay 50k less.

[wanderer]

If the cost/associate is really that different between firms (some first years worth @1400, while others break even with third years), why don't the firms that use associates more efficient pay more?

The inefficient firms couldn't afford to match and boom, competitive advantage for the efficient firm.

Because salaries have nothing to do with firm profitability and everything to do with the associate employment market. There's no incentive for a firm to raise salaries when they can just pocket the difference with no consequence.

This gets to the heart of the matter. Is your labor worth what they have to pay you for it or what it does for their bottom line? There's no right answer, but the point is that you can be very profitable for your firm without being "underpaid" in a normative sense.

It is a little rich that young associates, who are by and large profiting off the hegemony of American capitalism-as-religion, think they should be judged by how much value they add instead of how little their employers can get away with paying them.

The salary for big law vs. the rest of the private sector is so bimodal that if it wasn't for prestige whoring, nobody would be making 160k. What's the profitability of a 500/week lawyer in a solo shop where the solo has a yacht?

Well, it's prestige whoring in a sense, but biglaw firms aren't wrong that if they just started hiring whoever would work for the least money, they would eventually lose the cachet that makes clients hire them in the first place.

To an extent you're right. Firms like to say "we have the best and the brightest," and having a bunch of Yale kids says that. But I think a firm can succeed because it has a huge name, and lower rates because it opens itself up to a larger swath of the labor pool. A problem is that it's suicide to lower associate salaries at any time except during the deepest of recessions--it kills morale.

[wanderer]

If the cost/associate is really that different between firms (some first years worth @1400, while others break even with third years), why don't the firms that use associates more efficient pay more?

The inefficient firms couldn't afford to match and boom, competitive advantage for the efficient firm.

Because salaries have nothing to do with firm profitability and everything to do with the associate employment market. There's no incentive for a firm to raise salaries when they can just pocket the difference with no consequence.

This gets to the heart of the matter. Is your labor worth what they have to pay you for it or what it does for their bottom line? There's no right answer, but the point is that you can be very profitable for your firm without being "underpaid" in a normative sense.

It is a little rich that young associates, who are by and large profiting off the hegemony of American capitalism-as-religion, think they should be judged by how much value they add instead of how little their employers can get away with paying them.

This is a pretty credited post. Private-sector employers pay only what they have to: profits are #1.

[sighsigh]

Because salaries have nothing to do with firm profitability and everything to do with the associate employment market. There's no incentive for a firm to raise salaries when they can just pocket the difference with no consequence.

This gets to the heart of the matter. Is your labor worth what they have to pay you for it or what it does for their bottom line? There's no right answer, but the point is that you can be very profitable for your firm without being "underpaid" in a normative sense.

It is a little rich that young associates, who are by and large profiting off the hegemony of American capitalism-as-religion, think they should be judged by how much value they add instead of how little their employers can get away with paying them.

God, +1. Questions of "what you're worth," "what you deserve," and so on tend to evolve into discussions so fucking arbitrary it's ridiculous. The bottom line is that in the private market you're paid as little as your employers can get away with paying you.

[JCougar]

Well, it's prestige whoring in a sense, but biglaw firms aren't wrong that if they just started hiring whoever would work for the least money, they would eventually lose the cachet that makes clients hire them in the first place.

Not really. It's the clients demanding that they outsource doc review to TTT grads. The clients themselves recognize that a substantial percentage of the work they were formerly farming out to Biglaw firms could be done by monkeys, and didn't require T14 grads at the top of their class.

The F150 company I left to pursue law school got sued a few months after. My friends in my old department who weren't even lawyers were texting me "hey, you would like this, they're making me do this thing called 'discovery' for this lawsuit."

I honestly think the massive prestige whoring done by Biglaw firms is valued most by the Biglaw firms themselves. Clients paid for the big firms mostly because the partners have the right experience--but could care less where the associates are from, as long as they didn't nearly flunk out of law school.

[dixiecupdrinking]

Well, it's prestige whoring in a sense, but biglaw firms aren't wrong that if they just started hiring whoever would work for the least money, they would eventually lose the cachet that makes clients hire them in the first place.

Not really. It's the clients demanding that they outsource doc review to TTT grads. The clients themselves recognize that a substantial percentage of the work they were formerly farming out to Biglaw firms could be done by monkeys, and didn't require T14 grads at the top of their class.

The F150 company I left to pursue law school got sued a few months after. My friends in my old department who weren't even lawyers were texting me "hey, you would like this, they're making me do this thing called 'discovery' for this lawsuit."

I honestly think the massive prestige whoring done by Biglaw firms is valued most by the Biglaw firms themselves. Clients paid for the big firms mostly because the partners have the right experience--but could care less where the associates are from, as long as they didn't nearly flunk out of law school.

I would guess your old coworkers are just being asked to turn over some emails or something. It would be utter incompetence to let them make actual responsiveness determinations.

Biglaw is outsourcing the brainless shit to people with less gilded resumes, and they are paying them less. But when it comes down to who big clients want handling aspects of major matters that require discretion and intelligence, they want people they trust. That's the partners, as you point out, but it's also having a stable of associates handling the day to day who you believe are smart and hardworking and were hired because they were the best available, not the cheapest.

Anyway this is all to my point that there is something other than mere prestige whoring keeping the current system in place. Don't you think if firms could up PPP by $100,000 tomorrow (pretty conservatively, say cut associate salaries by $50k at 2:1 leverage) they would? I think they know it would be damaging to the long term value of what they offer, or at the very least the perceived value of what they offer -- which is the same thing in the end.

[lacrossebrother]

I just want to thank the brilliant contributors making observations about the nature of salaries as if that someone is important to an underpaid vs. overpaid analysis. It's really helpful and your understanding of free market principles surely helped you to ace micro 101. Since Econ is actually entirely taught in micro 101, again, I want to thank you for your titillating analyses that no one could have recognized without your comments.

[JusticeJackson]

.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

I just want to thank the brilliant contributors making observations about the nature of salaries as if that someone is important to an underpaid vs. overpaid analysis. It's really helpful and your understanding of free market principles surely helped you to ace micro 101. Since Econ is actually entirely taught in micro 101, again, I want to thank you for your titillating analyses that no one could have recognized without your comments.

I mean, fine, I know we all understand a demand curve, but a lot of people posting ITT made an argument along the lines of "If there were no other bottles of water, you would pay $100 for one. Therefore, a bottle of water must be worth $100."