At this time is August 22. It’s been two full enterprise weeks since Milbank introduced that it could be handing out special bonuses to associates ($6,000 to $25,000, based mostly on class yr). Different midsize and boutique companies have already stepped in to award summer season bonuses to their associates — companies like Vartabedian Hester & Haynes ($5,000); Otterbourg ($15,000); Bell Nunnally (as much as $15,000); and Hueston Hennigan ($10,000 to $30,000, based mostly on hours) — however we’ve heard nothing however crickets from Milbank’s Biglaw brethren. Biglaw has kind of ignored the agency’s announcement.
Biglaw companies have performed this ready sport earlier than in the case of bonuses, however that is attending to be a bit a lot. That is trying like what occurred final summer season, when Milbank introduced a special summer bonus, and the market didn’t react till Cravath finally decided to match when asserting its year-end bonuses.
It’s hardly a spoiler alert to say what’s certain to occur subsequent. Everyone knows that the most important and most worthwhile Biglaw companies are going to match these bonuses as a result of nobody needs to be caught flat-footed in the case of compensation. Why not announce these matches now, as a substitute of constructing associates wait to listen to the excellent news? Cease delaying the inevitable.
We’ve acquired one week left earlier than Labor Day is right here. In case your agency pronounces summer season bonuses, please tell us ASAP, so we will unfold the information and hopefully make the market do one thing.
Bear in mind everybody, we rely in your tricks to keep on high of these items. So when your agency matches, please textual content us (646-820-8477) or email us (topic line: “[Firm Name] Summer time Bonuses”). Please embody the memo if obtainable. You possibly can take a photograph of the memo and ship it through textual content or e-mail in case you don’t wish to ahead the unique PDF or Phrase file.
And in case you’d like to join ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert listing we’ll additionally use for wage bulletins), please scroll down and enter your e-mail handle within the field beneath this publish. In case you beforehand signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t must do something. You’ll obtain an e-mail notification inside minutes of every bonus announcement that we publish.
Staci Zaretsky is the managing editor of Above the Regulation, the place she’s labored since 2011. She’d love to listen to from you, so please be happy to email her with any ideas, questions, feedback, or critiques. You possibly can observe her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or join along with her on LinkedIn.
