Associate Bonus Watch: Kirkland's Unhappy Campers?

This week bonuses were announced at Kirkland & Ellis. And it seems that some folks aren’t pleased.
Bonuses are individualized at K&E, based on your hours and performance rating (above class / with class / below class). Historically the firm has generally been above-market in terms of overall bonus payments. In the past, it was not unusual for a “with class” associate, billing an average number of hours, to get a bigger bonus than the market-level bonus paid to his or her class year by the big New York lockstep firms (e.g., Cravath).
(The firm’s traditional generosity on bonuses is one reason for the sometimes fierce loyalty Kirkland associates exhibit towards their firm. Here at ATL, we jokingly refer to it as the “Kirkland Kool-Aid”: whenever we write something even mildly negative about K&E, we get viciously attacked in the comments by Kirkland lawyers rushing to the defense of their beloved firm.)
But are this year’s bonuses different — and stingier — at Kirkland & Ellis?


Last year, as we reported, the Kirkland bonus lodestar was essentially derived from the Cravath scale. Some people received bigger bonuses than their Cravath colleagues of comparable seniority, and some people received smaller ones. But a number of K&E attorneys were disgruntled because they felt their firm had enjoyed a strong year and should have set its average or typical bonus well above Cravath (which did not have a good 2008).
We don’t know the overall K&E bonus distributions this year. But is it possible that the scale they’re keyed to is perhaps lower than Cravath? One first-year associate (class of 2008) thinks so:

The general impression is that the firm is paying well below market. I’m at the end of my first year (and a bit) and was told I received [a] standard first year bonus [under $5,000].

If the standard bonus for class of 2008 associates is below $5,000, then K&E is paying below the market, at least at this seniority level. The Cravath-level bonus for a class of 2008 grad is $7,500.
A second source offers a more mixed assessment:

Just got mine, above market — smaller than I’d like, but I can’t complain.

Fair enough. We’ll leave the complaining to our third Kirkland tipster:

K&E – Almost all corporate associates (not sure about other practice groups, but it’s always the same scale) received nada for bonuses (had to bill at least 1,800, which very very few did). Even high-billers (2100+) only received marginally better bonuses than Cravath scale — roughly $1,000 for every hundred hours over 2,000.

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An extra thousand bucks for a marginal 100 hours comes out to $10 an hour. Yikes. Even contract attorneys do better than that. The K&E correspondent continues:

Two thousand hours earned you Cravath. Complete embarrassment. People (obviously) aren’t happy. News came out [on Monday and Tuesday] via individual VMs/calls.

Well, it could be worse. At Quinn Emanuel, you needed to hit 2100 hours to get a Cravath-sized bonus.
So the Kirkland folks we heard from were for the most part displeased. But perhaps there’s a selection bias problem: maybe we only heard from the unhappy?
Feel free to brag about your generous Kirkland bonus — or just compare notes about bonuses, if you’re not in the mood for bragging (or have nothing to brag about) — in the comments. If you have something you’d like to share with us directly, drop us a line by email. Thanks.
UPDATE: One K&E associate, who on the whole is very happy with the Kirkland experience, had this to say about bonuses:

[T]here was some disappointment. The firm is doing very well financially and we had hoped bonuses would reflect that reality. But they were definitely less than last year and significantly less than two years ago. To put it in context, my bonus this year was about [percentage redacted] of what it was two years ago, despite more hours and a better class rating and more seniority. But I was way, way over NY market for my year. So it’s hard to complain too much.

I just think of it as a savvy business decision by the partnership. Why pay huge bonuses when the market isn’t?

This is similar to what some said about Kirkland’s 2008 bonuses. Until the economy and the legal job market make full recoveries, expect somewhat anemic bonuses — even at places that are doing relatively well, like K&E.

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