Small Law Firms

California Litigation Boutique Crushes Market Bonuses

The bonuses are being described by tipsters as 'market-busting.'

By  
on

If you want the really big money, turns out you should be looking at litigation boutiques. Hot off the news that Wilkinson Walsh + Eskovitz topped the Cravath scale — at a rate of 1.5x — Hueston Hennigan demolished even those generous bonuses.

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise — last year, Hueston Hennigan was similarly generous. Sources say the firm announced their bonuses yesterday and it appears that Hueston Hennigan bonuses range from 30 to 50 percent of an associate’s base salary, based on class year, hours, and quality of work. The bonuses are being described by tipsters as “market-busting.” And this is in addition to the firm’s contributions to associate 401(k) accounts, which start at around 3 percent of the associate’s gross pay and do not require any contribution by the associate.

Sources also indicate that the majority of first- and second-year associates received 30 percent bonuses — which translated to up to 3x the market rate. A few even received bonuses that total 50 percent of their base salary. A very nice bonus indeed. Some 2017 grads even received bonuses upwards of $15,000, which is how much a 2016 grad receives on the market scale.

As you might imagine, Hueston Hennigan associates are pretty pleased with this payday:

Hueston Hennigan announced bonuses today. Once again they were incredibly generous and beat the Cravath scale BY FAR. Virtually all seemed to get between 30-50% of salary. Everyone seems very very happy. Love that the bonuses are part of a profit sharing system.

Please help us help you when it comes to bonus news at other firms. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”) or text (646-820-8477), or tweet (@ATLblog). We always keep our sources anonymous — and that includes our sources for bonus stories. 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. Thanks for your help.

Do you like to be in the know? Do you love gossiping with friends and co-workers over the latest bonus news? Then you simply must sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts. It’s easy, just scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Thanks!

Sponsored

headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Sponsored

Bonus Time

Enter your email address to sign up for ATL's Bonus & Salary Increase Alerts.

Topics

, , , ,