A Member Of The $160K-Plus Club Raises Associate Salaries Nationwide
Yeehaw! This Texas-based firm is lassoing more cash for its associates.
Yeehaw! A Texas-based member of the $160K-Plus Club — the designation for firms we previously highlighted for paying their first-year associates more than $160,000 per year — has adopted the new Cravath salary scale. McKool Smith, a firm that specializes in complex trial practice and whose attorneys pride themselves on their skills in the courtroom, just gave their associates another reason to be excited about litigating with the firm.
Prior to matching the Cravath salary scale, the firm paid a total compensation package of $177,500 to first-year associates: a $165,000 base salary, a $10,000 signing bonus, and a $2,500 year-end bonus. Now, their first-year associates will start at a base of $180,000, before any additional signing bonuses and year-end bonuses. We believe that McKool has increased salaries for all offices, including offices in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Marshall, New York, Silicon Valley, and Washington, D.C.
McKool Smith is the first member of the $160K-Plus Club that has announced salary raises to our knowledge. Other firms we’ve not yet heard from include Bickel & Brewer, Boies Schiller & Flexner, Desmarais LLP, Susman & Godfrey, Wachtell Lipton, and Williams & Connolly. Will McKool Smith’s move inspire other members of this elite club to raise their salaries even higher? We’ll have to wait and see.
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Congratulations to all associates at McKool Smith! All of this new cash is pretty “kool.”
Remember, we are covering this trend extensively, so please drop us a line — text (646-820-8477) or email (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches Cravath”) — when you know of another firm making a compensation move. 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. All sources are kept strictly confidential.
(Flip to the next page to see the full McKool Smith pay-raise memo, from Executive Director Gary Eden.)
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Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. Follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
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