Top Law Schools

What does this term mean? Does it just refer to firms such as Cravath, S&C, STB? Or does it mean something totally different?

Egregious STB trolling

Loosely speaking, the firms which set compensation and benefits standards. Nobody would argue that Cravath, Skadden, S&C, and STB are amongst them (it's not STB trolling; they were the first to raise associate starting salaries to $160,000).

There are then a lot of firms that are unlikely to make compensation increasing moves on their own, but also would never fall behind. DPW, Cleary, Paul Weiss, Debevoise, and a lot of other firms will simply never let their comp packages "fall behind" but people aren't really looking to them to be the first shot across the bow for a spring bonus, salary increase, etc.

Then there are the great unwashed masses of firms - firms that more or less follow the compensation scheme of the top firms, kind of. You'll start finding firms where yearly salary progression or bonus aren't rigidly lockstep, firms with altogether lower comp, etc. This becomes especially common the further away you get from major cities and the largest / best brand name firms.