The partners at Holland & Knight must be a little… annoyed. In late March, H&K got some positive press in these pages for raising associate salaries. But two months later, Cravath showed up and took NY (and everywhere else) to $180K, making Holland & Knight associates once again below market (and not happy about it).
So this morning, managing partner Steven Sonberg sent out a memo to all associates announcing another pay raise. Here’s the key info (full memo on the next page):
[T]he firm will increase Level 1 associate salaries in the Boston, Stamford, New York, Mid-Atlantic, Chicago, Dallas, and California offices to $180,000. The Level 1 salaries in the South Florida offices will increase to $160,000. The Level 1 salary in Atlanta will increase to $155,000.
The firm will make corresponding adjustments to the current Level 1 salaries in its other offices based on market conditions. The Level 2 salaries in all markets will also be adjusted based on specific market conditions. In addition, the salary ranges applicable to more senior associates in all markets will be increased. All of these adjustments will be announced by August 1, 2016.
The salary of each upper-level associate will be determined under the same criteria used in the past. These determinations will be communicated to individual associates by the end of the first week of September.
As you may recall from prior coverage, “Level 1” and “Level 2” associates are first- and second-year associates in H&K-speak, and they are paid on a lockstep basis. More-senior associates get individualized salaries that are within what the firm calls “market range.” The new salaries will take effect on October 1.
With a fairly late implementation date (October instead of July), and with third-year associates and up getting mystery meat in their payday sandwiches (as opposed to the full market/Cravath scale), you might expect H&K associates to be unhappy. But they’re not — at least not the ones we’ve heard from. For example:
We feel happy because we really expected HK to forgo a raise altogether, since they just raised us from $145K to $160K (long overdue). Things were looking bleak. Honestly, without pressure from you all, doubtful this would have happened at all, so thank you.
The recruiters wouldn’t stop calling a handful of us. Once it was shown on the site that many of the other firms electing not to raise to $180K were bringing in far less than HK, that was tough to swallow. A lot of us have friends at other Biglaw firms and they would commonly tease us: “Wow, HK was at market for a whopping month.”
So we are pleased to be on the level of many others. Honestly, besides the compensation issues prior to today, the firm itself has been a pleasure to work for.
Note that Holland & Knight has an impressive A-minus grade in the ATL Insider Survey, despite paying a bit below market for a number of years. As we’ve said before, money isn’t everything when it comes to a satisfying legal career. (We just happen to focus on money because lawyers like metrics, and pay is easier to measure and to compare than, say, subjective satisfaction.)
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So congratulations, Holland & Knight associates, on the good news. By the end of the year, you’ll have twice as many pay raises as your colleagues at other firms.
(Flip to the next page for the Holland & Knight memo.)
Earlier: Days Go By… And Associates Keep Getting Angrier
Nationwide Pay Raise Watch: A Biglaw Firm Moves (Closer) To Market
David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at [email protected].