Associate Bonus Watch: Coveting Your Neighbor's Bonus

Bonus news being announced this late can't be good, right?

One of the big themes of the 2014 bonus season was the reemergence of the old New York/non-New York divide. Several prominent law firms, including Mayer Brown and Arnold & Porter, paid the Davis Polk scale to their NYC associates and something less than DPW to their non-NYC people.

Here’s another name you can add to that list: Covington & Burling. The firm basically followed Davis in New York back in December, then waited until last Friday to announce considerably lower bonuses for associates in other offices, including the D.C. mother ship.

This did not sit well with those non-New York associates. Here’s one especially thorough summary of the complaints (additional reactions collected on the next page):

Covington does not pay a Christmas bonus to its D.C. associates until almost Easter. This, simply put, is a dick move. Unapologetic cost saving is clearly a key motivation, as massive associate turnover at the first of the year means far fewer bonuses paid. This calculated delay is also a way to pay low bonuses when nobody is really reporting bonus news. But I saw how well that worked for Mayer Brown, and I thank you for spreading the word.

So here are the details of my bonus: with great reviews and over 2000 hours, I received significantly UNDER HALF of the DPW scale. Among people who were bonus-eligible, the firm paid roughly half of the DPW scale for my class year.

Another key detail: it was a wildly profitable year at Covington. Management has given a variety of insulting and unsatisfying explanations for the mismatch between their profits and our bonuses. Several have blamed the cost of moving into the new office. Maybe I’m being unreasonable, but moving the firm away from Pennsylvania Avenue, the Metro station, and any good quick lunch options is not a bonus in my book. One partner flippantly remarked that there’s more to life and work than just money. This, I will admit, is theoretically true. If the partners had left us with any time to spend with our families, to nurture social bonds with friends, or even to pick up our dry cleaning regularly, they might have a good point. Still other partners have denied that DPW defined the market. Facts, I suppose, are unimpressive to this last group. The only convincing explanation for the partners’ behavior is the one I constantly feel but never hear: f**k you, associates. We’re doing this because f**k you.

One Covington source gave us this table reflecting their sense of very rough average numbers (we’ve added numbers from the Davis Polk scale in parentheses)

2013: 9 (15)
2012: 20 (25)
2011: 25 (50)
2010: 50 (65)
2009: 50 (80)
2008: 60 (90)
2007 and up: 60 (100)

Note that these figures represent just one tipster’s guess as to average bonus figures. We heard from multiple sources who got less than these amounts.

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We reached out to Covington. The firm declined to comment.

Good things to come to those who wait? Maybe not at Covington & Burling, where bonuses seem to be a few days late and several dollars short. But let’s look on the bright side: associates who left the firm early in the year, without waiting around for their bonuses, can feel better about what they didn’t miss out on.

(Flip to the next page for a collection of individual Covington reactions.)

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