Biglaw firms are all about peer pressure. If the market leader when it came to compensation were to jump off a cliff, hundreds of other firms would quickly follow, regardless of whether or not it would be financially prudent for them to do so. Which is the latest firm to take the leap in the wake of Cravath’s 2017 bonus announcement?
That would be Covington & Burling, which if you recall, was wishy-washy about whether it would change its salary scale outside of New York following Cravath’s move to a $180K base rate — until the firm was essentially forced to do so by prevailing market forces.
Last year, Covington had some rather curious wording in its bonus memo, offering “maximum bonus amounts” — which were equal to Cravath rate, not above them, as seemingly suggested. This year, the firm has once again matched Cravath for all U.S. offices, and it’s deleted that odd language from its memo (which is available on the next page). Once again, those bonuses will be paid “by the end of January.”
That’s our take on the Covington & Burling bonuses. 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 promise 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. Remember: 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. You can also text us at 646-820-8477. We look forward to hearing from you.
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Staci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.