Biglaw Firm Offers Special Bonuses On Top Of Regular Bonuses As Reward For Increased Partner Profits

Who's getting more money in their next paycheck?

Associates, did you click on this article hoping for some firm to beat the Cravath bonus scale? Well, it’s time for you to temper your greed, and think about your colleagues on the staff side.

Ever since Biglaw bonus season started this past fall, we’ve received a slew of emails from law firm support staff wondering what their fate may be as the Benjamins continued to rain down upon associates. After all, it takes an army for law firms this large to run, and the behind-the-scenes battalions of paralegals, secretaries, administrative assistants, and all other support staff members deserve their due, too.

After an extremely successful year, one Biglaw firm came to the conclusion that its staff members deserved a little bit more, and decided to issue special bonuses of $1,000, on top of any merit-based bonuses that will be awarded to them in June.

Congratulations to Mintz Levin for setting the bar for how Biglaw firms ought to treat their administrative staff members.

According to managing member Bob Bodian, these bonuses were awarded in celebration of the firm’s 13 percent increase in equity partner profits. This is the second year in a row that special bonuses were given to staff members at the firm. Here’s what Bodian said during an interview with Big Law Business:

“[T]his year, we were up even more, and we exceeded our budget by even more, so the policy committee decided we should do it again,” Bodian said. …

Although the special bonus is not intended to become a regular fixture, Bodian said he would be “delighted” to offer one again next year.

And we’d be delighted to cover more special staff bonuses. If you’re a staff member at Mintz Levin, 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’ll keep you anonymous — could find its way into an update to this story.

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What did your firm do in terms of staff bonuses? Does your firm have plans to dole out any additional cash to staff — or associates — this spring? Please let us know.

As a little reminder, we love continually covering the Biglaw bonus season, but we need your help. 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.

Don’t forget, if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts, please enter your email address in the box below. 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. Cross your fingers for spring bonuses, everyone!

Mintz Levin Gives Staff $1,000 Bonuses [Big Law Business]


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Staci ZaretskyStaci 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.


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