The floodgates are open and we are awash in bonus news. Sources are reporting that Simpson Thacher and Cleary Gottlieb are both matching the Sullivan & Cromwell bonus scale.
That means a little extra money for those at the very top of the scale.
But does it mean spring bonuses?
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Simpson Thacher and Cleary Matching S&C”
Read carefully, because Kaye Scholer is hoping you won’t.
Last night, Kaye Scholer announced a match of the Cravath bonus scale from this season. And a match of the Cravath spring bonus from last season. But that has nothing to do with 2012 spring bonuses, which Sullivan & Cromwell alluded to last night. So even as Kaye Scholer associates are being “made whole” from the firm’s cheap stance on the last bonus season, it looks like they’re already starting this bonus season in the hole.
Keeping you updated about the latest bonus shenanigans is what Above the Law is here for….
In this week’s Career Center Survey, we asked you to predict how Biglaw’s 2011 year-end bonuses will stack up against bonuses based on 2010 performance.
Of the more than 700 responses we received, 28% of respondents think (or is hope the better word?) that the 2011 year-end bonus will be bigger than the combined 2010 Cravath year-end bonus, plus the 2011 Cravath spring bonus.
If those bonus numbers weren’t already forever etched in your mind, here’s a quick reminder of what those totals were….
Continue reading “Career Center Survey Results: Biglaw Bonus Predictions”
We’re about a month or so away from the arrival of the 2011 year-end bonus season. You know what that means: time to start freaking out. And maybe make a prediction while you’re at it. Take our short survey, brought to you by Lateral Link, and give us your best guess as to how Biglaw’s 2011 year-end bonus market will compare to 2010.
As always, responses are kept completely confidential. Be sure to check back later in the week to find out where everyone else thinks the bonus market is heading.
File this under the category of “better late than never.” Holland & Knight never adopted spring bonuses like other Biglaw firms. Why? Who knows. The firm didn’t want to play ball. Whatever.
Now the firm wants to put a little extra money into the pockets of Holland & Knight associates. Today, sources tell us that Holland & Knight announced it would be paying out a “fall” bonus. I guess it was a good summer at the firm.
But don’t get confused, this is supplemental money to the 2010 bonus, not an advance on the 2011 bonus. As we’ve already mentioned, firms are using 2011 revenue to pay for 2010 performance, so you really can’t count it against the 2011 bonus pool.
And Holland & Knight acknowledges that….
There was no rational foundation to do [the spring bonuses]. It was not as if suddenly all the law firms in The Am Law 100 were minting money.
— Ralph Baxter, longtime chairman and CEO of Orrick (shortly before he was overheard screaming at the Wheeling career associates to mint more money).
This week brought annual reviews and individual bonus news for associates at Morgan Lewis & Bockius. Today (Friday) is payday, so everyone at MLB should know their bonus by now (or fairly soon).
Back in November, firm chairman Francis M. Milone stated that 2010 bonuses would be “substantially larger” than last year. So that set expectations fairly high.
Did the MLB bonuses live up to the hype?
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Morgan Lewis & Bockius”
Over the holiday break, Irell & Manella announced its associate bonuses. Multiple sources are telling us that the Irell bonuses doubled the bonuses offered by Cravath, Sullivan & Cromwell, or their followers.
That’s great news, but Irell associates are not particularly impressed. Irell doubled the small bonuses of Cravath and S&C last year, too. And since Cravath et al. paid essentially the same bonus as last year, Irell associates ended up with the same bonus as last year, notwithstanding any increase in profit the firm may have achieved in 2010 over 2009.
Still, Irell is following a proven strategy to get noticed. Remember, it wasn’t all that long ago that Cravath was the most prestigious firm (according to the Vault rankings). But then Wachtell started consistently blowing Cravath away in terms of compensation, and now the Cravath’s and S&C’s of the world seem to be just playing for second place. The same thing could be happening to Irell: the firm shot up from #50 to #37 in the most recent Vault rankings, and I’d imagine that another year of paying double the market will help Irell continue its rise.
Actually, does Cravath really even constitute the “market” for top-end Biglaw associate compensation anymore? In 2008, Skadden doubled Cravath’s bonuses. In 2009, Cravath took advantage of a cratering economy to push bonuses to new lows, but there were still firms like Irell that found a way to beat the Cravath bonuses. And during the 2010 bonus season, it feels like the only firms even pretending that Cravath pays top associate compensation are the huge ones that really want to keep the associate compensation market as depressed as possible.
Let’s make a list of the firms that can see the Cravath bonuses in their rearview mirrors. We’ll get you started, and hopefully you can fill us in on anybody we’ve missed….
Yes, you read that headline correctly. Out of nowhere, Cahill Gordon & Reindel has decided to give out a mid-year bonus. Not Cravath, not S&C, but Cahill Gordon. The same Cahill Gordon that is one of the few firms to have significant layoffs in 2010. This is the firm that could push the market towards mid-year bonuses?
Apparently so. A tipster reported the bonus scale to Above the Law. It’s not a huge amount of money, but it’s something….
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Cahill Gordon Gives Out Mid-Year Bonuses”
We’re still catching up on associate bonus news. There have been some memos we’ve missed, including some from last month (technically, last year). If we haven’t reported on your firm’s bonus announcement, please email us. Don’t assume that one of your colleagues will submit the memo; that’s not necessarily the case.
Today we belatedly bring you bonus news from Kasowitz Benson. On December 31, the firm announced “benchmark” bonuses that appear to follow the Sullivan & Cromwell scale. But the memo notes that these are just “benchmark amounts, which are subject to adjustment to reflect individual performance and hours worked.” In the memo’s bonus table, the words “of up to” appear in between the words “Year-end bonus” and the dollar amount.
In addition, even some Kasowitz associates who received the full market amount aren’t happy. Find out why, and check out the full memo, after the jump.
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
Keep reading »
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
Keep reading »
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