Associate Bonus Watch: Weil Gotshal Plays the Match Game

Last week, we told you that Weil Gotshal was waiting to see how the other top-tier dominoes fell before deciding on spring bonuses. Well, since that time, many dominoes have fallen, all in line behind Cravath. Davis Polk, Skadden Arps, and now Paul Weiss have all matched the Cravath spring bonus scale. Cravath’s bonuses are a little bit more generous than the spring bonuses previously announced by Sullivan & Cromwell.

Weil was trying to figure out which firm, Cravath or S&C, the market would follow. It looks like that’s going to be Cravath.

Tipsters report that earlier today, Weil decided to fall in line….

We’re still waiting to see a full bonus memo from Weil, but multiple tipsters report that Weil has matched the the Cravath spring bonus schedule, just as Paul Weiss did this morning. If you have the full memo, please pass it along.

UPDATE: We now have the memo, which we’ve appended to the end of this post. Thanks!

It looks like today is turning out to be a day where we celebrate the romantic love between a Biglaw associate and cash money. That’s quite a turnaround, if you think about it. Just two years ago, almost to the day, Biglaw was reeling from the Valentine’s Day Massacre, a day when we reported 828 lawyer and staff layoffs in a single day.

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Many of the people who were laid off that day (and throughout the worst of the recession) did not land on their feet with another Biglaw job. Many of the people who were laid off then are not around to see these spring bonuses now. And the Biglaw economy is still far away from its pre-recession levels.

But, in two years, we’ve gone from hundreds of layoffs to $20K bonuses. Don’t tell anybody working at Howrey, but the Obama recovery seems to be well underway. This is a much happier Valentine’s Day than seemed possible only two years ago.

Earlier: Weil We’re Waiting for Spring Bonuses…
So, What Are We Calling Today Exactly?
Springtime Bonus Watch 2011

WEIL GOTSHAL & MANGES — MEMORANDUM — SPECIAL SPRING BONUS

From: Wolf, Barry
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 11:18 AM
To: US Associates
Subject: Special Spring Bonus

Sponsored

The Management Committee is pleased to announce that on April 29th the Firm will pay a special spring bonus to U.S. associates in good standing as follows:

** All compensation will be subject to customary pro-rations.

Barry M. Wolf
Executive Partner
Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
767 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10153


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