ABSTRACT
Recent developments surrounding the salaries of junior lawyers at large firms have demonstrated the potential of the Internet to strike at the core of the employment relationship at the upper echelons of the legal industry — a nonunion environment where hatchling lawyers traditionally have had little bargaining power. The development of the Internet website phenomenon known as “ the Greedy Associates” (GA) has stripped away some of the patina of lawyer-firm feudal loyalty and revealed an industry-wide partner-associate economic tension. Originally a Yahoo! Club message board, GA started as a website where a small group of young attorneys exchanged information about employment opportunities and working conditions in Manhattan. Within a year, its scrutiny widened to include top law firms across the country, and by the beginning of 2000, it was attracting hundreds of visitors daily. Soon after, a commercial legal website, anxious to attract Internet traffic from top-earning attorneys, lured the GA away from Yahoo! with promises of superior web hosting and monthly cash prizes. Since that time, the GA has become a powerful force in the legal community and an example of how web-based organization offers an effective means by which similarly 132situated employees across an industry can exchange information about their compensation and develop strategies for getting more.
