Troutman Pepper Locke has announced it will adopt the Milbank compensation scale, but only for a portion of its associate ranks, effective January 1, 2027.
The firm confirmed it will match the Milbank salary structure on a lockstep basis for associates in their first through fourth years of practice.
Under that scale, first-year associates will earn a base salary of $235,000, bringing the firm in line with what has become the industry benchmark.
The Milbank scale was originally set back in June and has since been adopted by a growing number of large law firms across the United States.
However, midlevel and senior associates at Troutman Pepper Locke will remain off the compensation grid entirely, continuing a longstanding firm tradition.
That tradition dates back to the firm’s merger with Locke Lord, when Troutman first introduced a compensation model that paid market rates for first- and second-year associates only.
Associates senior to that point were placed onto a two-tier system described as either a “standard” or “increased” scale, rather than a transparent lockstep structure.
Under the newly announced model, only those older associates sitting on the higher of the two tiers will receive compensation aligned with the Milbank scale.
The firm’s compensation grid has nonetheless expanded in a meaningful way, having previously cut off after the second year and now extending through the fourth year.
The move represents incremental progress for associates pushing for greater pay transparency and market alignment across the firm’s full associate population.
Troutman Pepper Locke joins a lengthening list of firms recalibrating their pay structures in response to competitive pressure from top-paying rivals in the legal market.
Whether the firm will eventually extend the lockstep grid beyond year four to cover its most senior associates remains an open question that the announcement does not address.