Biglaw

Associate Bonus Watch: Bill More, Make More, At Fried Frank

Fried Frank associates have known what their bonuses were going to be this year since at least 2015.

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Fried Frank, a firm that does a great job of not being interesting enough for Above the Law to be all up in their business, released their version of a Cravath-match. Here are the highlights.

  • It’s a 2,000 hour minimum to get the standard Cravath scale.
  • At 2,200 hours your get Cravath-plus-15%.
  • At 2,450 hours you get Cravath-plus-30%.
  • You can include up to 425 pro-bono (and certain other non-billiable) hours towards your hours requirement.

If you’re new to bonus season, the Fried Frank plan seems, well, interesting. Few firms allow you to put so many pro-bono hours towards your bonus cut-offs. And at 2,450 hours you are getting significantly more than Cravath.

But… this is exactly what they did last year, which was in accordance with a detailed bonus policy the firm laid out in 2015. So while I want to be all like “Fried Frank! Bonuses! To The Strongest!” the more accurate take is “Fried Frank does what they promised to do, again.”

Don’t get me wrong. Congratulations Fried Frank associates. Clarity and reliability in your bonus structure is actually a very good thing and, really, what we should expect from all law firms.

It just doesn’t make a terribly interesting news story. Next year, I hope Fried Frank adds a wrinkle: 30% above market for 2,450 bills, but one 2,450 biller will be chosen at random to receive brand new Dodge Charger. Spice it the hell up!

And now for some boilerplate that I don’t think anybody is reading anyway:

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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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Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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