Biglaw, Bonuses, Money

Associate Bonus Watch: Achin' For More Cash? This Firm Beat Market (For Some)!

Would an extra performance bonus of up to $25,000 put a little more pep in your step this holiday season?

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money step upWinter is coming, but with the way some Biglaw firms have been showering their associates with extra greenery, you could easily mistake this season for spring. Would a performance bonus of up to $25,000 — on top of your regular bonus — put a little more pep in your step this holiday season? Of course it would!

That’s the news that associates at Akin Gump received this weekend from firm hiring partner David Botter when they opened their emails. The firm is matching Cravath when it comes to its standard bonus (which associates are generally eligible to receive after billing about 1950 client hours, including pro bono hours), but for “truly outstanding performers … whose performance is deemed extraordinary,” the firm is willing to shell out some extra cash, ranging from $5,000 to $25,000. Those who went the extra mile at Akin Gump in 2016 will receive Cravath-beating bonuses on February 15, 2017 — but they likely won’t find out what their bonus actually is until sometime just before that date, which is a tad annoying for those who intended to do additional financial planning for the year to come prior to 2017’s arrival. Either way, congratulations are in order.

That’s our take on associate bonuses from Akin Gump. If you’re a lawyer at the firm, what do you think? Feel free to let us know how you feel by email, by text message (646-820-8477), or by tweet (@ATLblog). A fun or insightful response — we’ll keep you anonymous — could find its way into an update to this story.

As a little reminder, we love covering the Biglaw bonus season, but we need your help. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”). We always keep our sources on bonus stories anonymous. There’s no need to send the memo using your firm email account; your personal email account is fine. Please be sure to include the memo as proof; we like to post complete bonus memos as a service to our readers. You can take a photo of the memo and attach as a picture if you are worried about metadata in a PDF or Word file. Thanks for your help.

Don’t forget, if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts, please enter your email address in the box below. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Cheers to a happy bonus season, everyone!

(Flip to the next page to see the full bonus memo from Akin Gump.)

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Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. She’d love to hear from you, so feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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