How the Associate Salary Arms Race Affects Armstrong Teasdale

Armstrong Teasdale’s new managing partner John Beulick likes to describe his firm as the antithesis of law firms based in New York, California or Washington, D.C.

Based in St. Louis, with offices dotted throughout the mid-west, its strategy has been to put lawyers in cities that allow for lower operating expenses. That way, the firm can target the same client pool as the coastal firms and seek the same margins, but still charge lower rates, said Beulick.

“What some firms in other markets view as rate pressure, we see as opportunity,” he told me in an interview earlier this week, just days after assuming leadership of his roughly ...