Right this moment is August 22. It’s been two full enterprise weeks since Milbank introduced that it could be handing out particular bonuses to associates ($6,000 to $25,000, primarily based on class 12 months). Different midsize and boutique corporations have already stepped in to award summer season bonuses to their associates — corporations like Vartabedian Hester & Haynes ($5,000); Otterbourg ($15,000); Bell Nunnally (as much as $15,000); and Hueston Hennigan ($10,000 to $30,000, primarily based on hours) — however we’ve heard nothing however crickets from Milbank’s Biglaw brethren. Biglaw has roughly ignored the agency’s announcement.
Biglaw corporations have performed this ready sport earlier than with regards to bonuses, however that is attending to be a bit a lot. That is trying like what occurred final summer season, when Milbank introduced a particular summer season bonus, and the market didn’t react till Cravath lastly determined 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 corporations are going to match these bonuses as a result of nobody desires to be caught flat-footed with regards to compensation. Why not announce these matches now, as a substitute of creating associates wait to listen to the excellent news? Cease delaying the inevitable.
We’ve received one week left earlier than Labor Day is right here. In case your agency declares 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 prime of these things. So when your agency matches, please textual content us (646-820-8477) or electronic mail us (topic line: “[Firm Name] Summer season Bonuses”). Please embrace the memo if accessible. You may take a photograph of the memo and ship it by way of textual content or electronic mail when you don’t need to ahead the unique PDF or Phrase file.
And when you’d like to join ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert checklist we’ll additionally use for wage bulletins), please scroll down and enter your electronic mail tackle within the field under this publish. When you beforehand signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t have to do something. You’ll obtain an electronic mail notification inside minutes of every bonus announcement that we publish.
Staci Zaretsky is the managing editor of Above the Legislation, the place she’s labored since 2011. She’d love to listen to from you, so please be happy to electronic mail her with any suggestions, questions, feedback, or critiques. You may observe her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or join along with her on LinkedIn.
