A large part of my work as a legal recruiter is helping candidates move to a different geographic location, rather than switching firms within the same city, and quite often this involves a candidate moving from a large market (NYC, Chicago, LA) to a smaller one (Seattle, Portland, Phoenix). Candidates making this type of move are typically making it to be closer to family, because their partner or spouse needed to make their own career move, for a change in their quality of life, or some combination of those three. For obvious reasons, what is never the case is a candidate moving from a large market to a smaller one in order to increase their salary.
Even though places like Phoenix, Seattle, and Portland are still major cities, the salaries on average are quite a bit lower, and thus there can be a little bit of a sticker shock for lateral attorneys once they see the actual number in an offer letter. For instance, the total annual compensation (base salary plus bonus) for a sixth-year associate at a big firm in a major market can exceed $250k, but that same associate would likely see a maximum total compensation of $200k in a best-case-scenario in Portland or Seattle - in other words, a 20% net cut, and the gap can very often be wider.
