The end of the salary war?

Robert Nelson remembers when New York law firms paid first-year associates more than law firms in other cities around the country.But then, various law firms began to bid up the starting price for these associates - even in the late '80s and early '90s during the Silicon Valley shortage. When the bubble burst in 2000 and 2001, many firms retracted their higher offerings. But just a few years later, first-year …