Associate Bonus Watch: Biglaw Firm Helps Associates Celebrate Love By Making It Rain

We hear that loan repayment is an especially romantic Valentine’s Day gift for lawyers.

money in heart boxValentine’s Day is this weekend, and what better way to celebrate love than to give associates what they love most? Money!

It’s a bit late in the game for Biglaw firms to be announcing bonuses, but it’s standard operating procedure at some firms, especially when announcing bonus information for offices outside of New York.

We’ve heard that New York associates at Morrison & Foerster got their bonus news before the New Year, and that all associates outside of the Big Apple have been anxiously awaiting their bonus cash since then. Today is payday for patient MoFo associates, and now they’ll be able to spend their Cravath matches — plus a little extra on the top if they were high billers (2500+ hours) in 2015 — on gifts for themselves and their loved ones.

Here’s the 2015 Morrison & Foerster bonus scale for all associates outside of New York:

Class of 2015 $15,000 (prorated)
Class of 2014 $15,000
Class of 2013 $25,000
Class of 2012 $50,000
Class of 2011 $65,000
Class of 2010 $80,000
Class of 2009 $90,000
Class of 2008 (including prior years) $100,000

In the bonus memo, firm chair Larren Nashelsky elaborates as to how much more high billers will receive. The full MoFo 2015 bonus memo is available on the next page.

[T]he Firm will pay an additional amount to those associates who had the busiest years, which we are categorizing as 2,500+ hours. For 1st through 3rd year associates, the high hours bonus will be $5,000, and for 4th year and more senior associates, it will be $10,000.

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Associates at the firm seem to be generally happy. Here’s what some of them had to say:

  • “I feel like it’s hard for firms to win on the issue of hours based performance bumps. Personally, I support doing something to recognize those people that had to work exceptionally hard without overly encouraging people to strive for crazy hours by giving high incentives to hit those crazy hours.”
  • “High billers are upset with the high threshold for a bump (2500+ hours) and the paltry amount even if you hit that. The 2300 or 2400 hour billers are irritated. And anyone who barely met hours is, of course, thrilled.”

Congratulations on your hard-earned bonuses, MoFo associates. You’ve had a while to think about how to spend your cash, but if for some reason you haven’t decided yet, we hear that loan repayment is an especially romantic Valentine’s Day gift for lawyers.

If you have compensation news that we haven’t covered yet, please email us or text us (646-820-8477). We’ll continue to keep you informed this bonus season.

(If you’re interested, flip the page to see the Morrison & Foerster bonus memo in full.)

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