Associate Salaries, Biglaw, Bonuses, Hogan & Hartson, Lovells, Money

Nationwide Salary Thaw: Hogan Lovells Loves Its Associates

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The prior reports of additional payments to some associates at Hogan Lovells, designed to reward these associates for making their billable-hours targets, were accurate — at least with respect to the New York office. And it turns out that these payments constitute what in ATL-speak we call “true-up payments” — i.e., payments designed to give associates the pay they would have received had a salary freeze never occurred and they had received the customary annual raise for seniority.

This may sound confusing, but it’s really not. Let’s take a look at the memo from Hogan Lovells….

The original documents are posted in full at the end of this post. The memo, sent to New York associates from co-CEOs Warren Gorrell and David Harris, explains everything quite clearly in the first two paragraphs:

And what about salary levels for next year? The memo states that “base compensation levels for 2011 will be determined at the end of this year,” but hopefully adds that “[t]he firm currently expects that those associates who are meeting the firm’s quality of performance and minimum billable hour expectations in 2011 will be paid on the pre-freeze salary scale that was in effect at the end of 2008.”

Yay! That’s good news.

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Of course, even with respect to good news, you can always find something to complain about. First, the policy applies just to New York (as far as we know; the memo we received is addressed to “New York Office Associates”). Second, it leaves the Lovells lawyers in limbo. From a commenter on our last post:

The crap part is that you have to be “on target with hours” for the true-up payment. However, no one will tell the Lovells people what that means, given that we’ve moved from a UK fiscal year (ending May 1) to a US fiscal year (ending Oct. 30). Very frustrating.

However, it’s good that the Ho Love combined mgmt realizes that they have to pay their associates market or a whole lot more will be heading to the door asap. Now about those bonuses….

So what about those bonuses? Stay tuned. It’s still a few months away, but the 2010 bonus season will be intriguing — an indicator of the direction the law business in heading in.

Thanks to the readers who sent us the Hogan Lovells memorandum and charts (see below; you can click on the charts to enlarge). If you have any other compensation-related memo that we haven’t posted, whether for Hogan Lovells or any other firm, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] compensation memo”). Thanks.

HOGAN LOVELLS — MEMORANDUM — 2010 ASSOCIATE COMPENSATION (NEW YORK)

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HOGAN LOVELLS — CHARTS — 2010 ASSOCIATE COMPENSATION (NEW YORK)

Earlier: Nationwide Salary Thaw: Happy Happenings at Hogan?
Hogan & Hartson: Bonus and Salaries for the New Year

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