Associate Bonus Watch: No News Is Good News
This is not the most exciting announcement -- and associates are probably okay with that.
It’s January, which brings with it a new year to fill with billable hours, new classes of law firm partners, and a few new bonus announcements. While most New York-based firms announce bonuses in November and December, firms in other cities often wait until the new year to break their news. And we are standing by to cover them.
Today we bring you the bonus news of Goodwin Procter. They’re individualized, with amounts to be communicated on January 24 and paid on January 25, but in the meantime, we have the memo (posted on the next page).
It is, in substantive terms, pretty much the same as last year’s memo — which is probably a good thing, since the 2015 bonuses received a warm reception at the firm.
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There are some minor tweaks. The review category previously called “Meets Basic Expectations” is now called “Below Frameworks” — a sign that meeting expectations isn’t good enough in Biglaw? The category previously called “Strong” is now called “Successfully Achieves Frameworks” (which strikes me as a mouthful; not sure what the problem with “Strong” was). The category of “Distinctive” remains, well, “Distinctive.”
Although the Goodwin Procter bonuses are individualized, the firm does reveal information about the distribution of bonuses. The reference to “the amount listed for their class” refers to a table that tracks the market aka Cravath scale. For the 2016 bonuses, here’s the money quote:
This year, over 68% of associates are receiving bonuses. Of those receiving bonuses, 40% will receive an amount greater than the amount listed for their class, 36% will receive their class amount, and 24% will receive less than their class amount.
Here’s the comparable information for the 2015 bonuses:
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This year, over 70% of associates are receiving bonuses. Of those receiving bonuses, 42% will receive an amount greater than the amount listed below for their class, 27% will receive their class amount and 30% will receive less than their class amount.
So the percentage of associates getting bonuses and the percentage of associates getting above-market bonuses are roughly the same. The real shift takes place between people receiving market and below-market bonuses — and it’s positive for associates. For 2016, 36% are getting market and 24% are getting below market — an improvement on the 2015 figures of 27% at market and 30% below market.
The memo then discusses base salaries for 2017. No surprises here; we covered Goodwin Procter’s move to the $180K scale over the summer. On the bright side, the firm has not raised the 1,950-hour threshold for bonus eligibility along with salaries. Yay!
Please help us help you when it comes to bonus news at other firms. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”) or text us (646-820-8477). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.
And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. 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.
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(Flip to the next page to view the complete Goodwin Procter bonus memo.)
Earlier: Another Boston-Based Firm Matches Cravath
Associate Bonus Watch (2015): Better Than Before (By A Bit)
David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@abovethelaw.com.
