BIGLAW, BIG BUCKS: Cravath Fires Latest Shot In Salary War: $400,000 For 7th Year Associates. The year my dad got his PhD, Cravath salaries were $9000 a year, though they were boosted shortly thereafter. My dad had already accepted a job as an assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee, at a salary of $12,000 a year. He knew about the difference because, though he was in the Divinity School, he had taken some classes at Harvard Law School (Harvard lawprof Lon Fuller was on his Thesis Committee, what would now be called a dissertation committee; so was John Rawls). Let’s just say that salaries of UT professors no longer exceed those at Cravath.