It is intriguing to watch the latest salary war taking place among prominent law firms. Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy LLP fired the first shot, Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP brought in bigger weapons, and now Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP raises (no pun intended) the stakes further, bringing salary for the class of 2017 to $195,000. For those of us far along in our careers, it can be difficult to remember that these small pay raises matter a lot at the front end for at least two reasons.

First, an extra $5,000 or $10,000 is meaningful to a new lawyer, who probably has student loans to pay off and often has to live in an expensive city to make that money in the first place. Second, starting salaries are publicly known, and it is hard for law graduates to ignore the small hit to their egos that may come with a lower salary, or resist the siren call of a slightly higher salary that gives a quick burst of prestige relative to their recent-graduate colleagues.

But I urge my middle-aged and older colleagues to help the recent graduates we know focus on the long term. Most importantly, there is a difference between the same salary at an institutional firm like Cravath, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP, and the like, and the (relatively) younger firms matching BigLaw.

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