Heller Ehrman

Associate Bonus Watch: A Heller Ehrman Update

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Here’s some follow-up on last week’s post about bonuses at Heller Ehrman. We don’t mean to pick on them, but we have talkative sources over there, it’s been a slow day (even setting aside earlier technical difficulties that took the site offline for a while), and this is what we happen to have in the hopper.
A tipster tells us:

[T]he big news from [last week’s] meeting was the news that the firm will not be departing in any way from the bonus memo that was put out at the time of Heller’s non-raise last summer (click here (PDF)). In other words, a class of 2002 associate with over 2400 hours last year is guaranteed only $45,500 — approximately $55k less than s/he would have received for billing 2100 hours down the street at Quinn.

After last month’s news that MoFo (which had announced a very similar non-raise and bonus structure) was upping everyone’s bonus by $10k-$20k, the associates here were hopeful (and basically expected) that Heller would do the same; the firm always claims that it doesn’t pay attention to what NY firms or LA firms do (without giving any good explanation, given that it has more associates in those two offices (combined) than it does in SF), and generally names Orrick and MoFo as the firms it looks at as “peers” — though it notably stopped mentioning Orrick as soon as Orrick raised without slashing bonuses last summer. It’s unclear who the firm now sees as its “peers,” since I don’t know of any AmLaw 100 firms that pay as little as Heller does.

The firm will likely respond to this discontent, if at all, by trotting out its old schtick about how its “culture” is so different from that of law firms that pay more. This may have been true 10 years ago, and is undoubtedly still true if you’re comparing it to, say, Skadden. But this place is no different than Orrick or MoFo or Latham in terms of how associates spend their time (and how much of it they spend), and how they’re treated. I can’t think of any reason I could legitimately give to a law student of why they should come here if they had offers from these other CA firms; I certainly would choose differently if I were a 2L now. Expect increased lateral departures, regardless of what the firm says it will do for bonuses next year.

Earlier: Associate Bonus Watch: Heller Ehrman

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