Above the Law has a leaked memo from DLA Piper saying that the firm is cutting first-year associate salaries. DLA Piper confirms. Last year, the firm’s number was $160,000 in larger markets, including Baltimore. Now, the newest incoming associates will make $145,000 instead — when they actually start. Remember that DLA Piper, like many other firms, has delayed first-years’ start dates. Instead of starting work in September 2009, DLA Piper’s new lawyers will not report to work until January 2010, though they will get a stipend in the meantime.

The memo also says the firm will adjust salaries for other associates based on year and performance. The firm says partners, of counsel and senior counsel lawyers have also taken pay cuts.

Recently a bunch of partners gathered to trash-talk Generation Y.

Okay, so the trash-talking was called a “discussion,” and it wasn’t backhanded whispering in the lunchroom. “Dealing with Gen-Y @ Work” was a seminar topic at the InsideCounsel SuperConference in Chicago this month. Speakers included attorney-bloggers from BrainsOnPurpose and Simple Justice as well as corporate counselors.

Exhibit A: The description of the workshop.

“Their sense of entitlement and refusal to follow corporate dictates blindly – not to mention a couple of tattoos or piercings – make them very different than their colleagues. The flip side is they bring a tremendous energy to their work and are more tuned-in to the world around them…”

How could we possibly take offense to that description?

Exhibit B: N.Y. attorney (and Gen Y-er) Adrian Dayton writes that Scott Greenfield kicked things off with this statement: “Generation Y is entitled, lazy, selfish, tech savvy, and incompetent.”

I’m not even sure where to start with that one, except to say that if I were a Millennial working for Greenfield, I wouldn’t be for much longer.

Dayton thinks the fundamental disconnect lies in the older generation’s “work comes first” mentality and the Millenials’ demand for work-life balance. As a hard-working member of Gen Y – who strives for that ‘balance’ – I agree.

He articulates our generation’s position:

We are not motivated by money. At least not as much as our parents were. The currency we are most interested in is lifestyle. Some of us are brilliant and hard working, but you have to dangle the right carrot in front of us.

So the cards are on the table. Surely the economic setbacks of late will delay any shifts on this front, but I wonder – who will win out, and when? To paraphrase John Mayer, an arguably lame yet successful Millennial, ‘one day our generation, is gonna rule the population / so we keep on waiting, waiting on the world to change.’