Comments on: WilmerHale Joins the Killing Lockstep Party

By: guest

guest — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:58:32 +0000

Chief Talent Officer ….aka Brad Scott…..wasn’t he the guy who ran Heller into the ground….I guess he has to justify his $350k salary somehow. Run for the exit…..we are all doomed!

By: guest

guest — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:57:06 +0000

This is blatant cost-cutting measure. It’s also insulting that WH thinks so little of its non-partner talent that it thinks it can spin this as somehow connected to macro changes in the industry by calling it “merit-based” even though they have no idea how they will assess merit any differently than they currently do. They’ve made it clear that the change will not result in a larger aggregate bonus pool, all else being equal. So it’s a pay cut for the masses, pure and simple, and a disingenuous one at that. A sad, sad day.

By: guest

guest — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:23:51 +0000

74: You might be thinking of the TARP-induced situation where Congress was threatening to 100% tax bonuses beyond a certain amount to employees of companies who took TARP money from the US government. This was a unique situation and isn’t how bonus money normally gets treated.
Or, you could be confusing something you learned in Tax I. Bonuses are “taxed more” insofar as they’re income in addition to your base salary and thus, are going to be taxed in your highest marginal tax bracket. For most lawyers, we’re talking about the 28% or 33% brackets. That having been said, simply changing base compensation to bonus (or vice versa) isn’t going to change the tax treatment of your money. Every dollar you receive, whether base salary or bonus, from ~$82k to ~$171k is going to be taxed at 28% and every dollar from ~$171k to ~$373k is going to be taxed at 33%. Of course, this doesn’t include credits, deductions, and all that other tax fun, but gives you a general idea of how things work.

By: guest

guest — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:31:37 +0000

74 must be unemployed.

By: guest

guest — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:29:25 +0000

74: No. You’re an idiot.

By: guest

guest — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:00:47 +0000

Don’t bonuses get taxed at a higher rate than normal income? Doesn’t this new compensation scheme screw over associates then?

By: guest

guest — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:26:34 +0000

12/15/2009 marks the death of WilmerHale as a great firm. It was on a downward slope for a while, but this is the final nail in the coffin. It’s time to slide down the Vault rankings into the V100s as the more talented folk go elsewhere.

By: guest

guest — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:43:51 +0000

68: Agreed. Associates don’t trust firms for the most part to evaluate them fairly, not to institute underhanded crap like stealth layoffs or sudden and arbitrary bad performance reviews that result in firings. Therefore, why should associates trust the same firms to convert more of their salary into bonus and have even more control over how much they get paid each year?
If firms like WilmerHale would guarantee that either the total amount of associate salaries payed out wouldn’t change or that the median employee would still receive a market-rate salary, then sure, bring on merit-based compensation. But, I don’t think they’d want to do that, because part of the shift is clearly a cost-cutting strategy whereby many associates end up making less while only a few get more.

By: guest

guest — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:43:25 +0000

Salaries – frozen
Health insurance premiums – raised
Bonus minimum – 2000 hours
Upward evaluations – postponed
Working at WilmerHale – priceless

By: guest

guest — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:40:45 +0000

WilmerFlail
WilmerFail
Wilmer SUCKS