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Sullivan & Cromwell Matches Salaries... We Think

Even though salaries are announced by individualized memo, our army of tipsters is coming through for us.

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In keeping with a certain old -fashioned worldview, Sullivan & Cromwell doesn’t issue compensation alerts with firm-wide, completely transparent proclamations like most firms do, opting instead for the individualized memo to each associate. Charitably, you could call it “genteel” or “a personal touch.” More cynically, you could call it annoyingly opaque.

Despite this opacity, S&C isn’t what we’d call a black box when it comes to compensation. While some firms eschew the firm-wide memo in order to quietly shortchange associates, hoping that the associates will be too embarrassed to tell the world, each assuming that they are the only ones making peanuts — *cough* Jones Day *cough* — S&C generally pays the prevailing market rate, they just make it an arduous reporting task to verify this fact.

So, here we go again. S&C has sent out individualized memos in the wake of what I’m calling “the Milbank, as amended with regard to bonus structure by Simpson, as further modified for senior associates in accordance with Cravath scale” and, as we hear from tipsters in each class, we can confirm that we seem to be looking at a match.

To remind everyone, this is the scale as Cravath left it:

So far, we’ve only heard about matches at multiple class levels (e.g., a third-year informing us that their memo provides for a $220,000 salary with $10,000 summer bonus), but we’ll update if anything comes in that deviates from the pattern. UPDATE: Seniors may even be beating the market in some places — a class of ’09 associate reported $360K. Senior associates confirm the $25K summer bonus structure too. UPDATE: Summers will be matched accordingly too.

The new salary will take effect July 1, with the bonuses distributed on July 15.

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This news is certainly not surprising, as S&C is never one to buck the Cravath market. At least they followed the latter firm’s announcement quickly this time — some associates were peeved over the winter at the firm’s delayed bonus announcement.

One presumes this will salve those ancient wounds.

While S&C is a uniquely difficult case to report on, everyone should remember that we still depend on your tips to stay on top of raises. So when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Raises Salaries”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

Don’t assume someone else has already emailed us. We’ll gladly take redundant emails over no information at all.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we’ll also use for salary announcements), please 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!

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Earlier: New York To $190K — No, Cravath Didn’t Make The First Move
Biglaw Giant Matches Associate Raises, PLUS Special Summer Bonuses!
Cravath Hath Spoken — And Beats Milbank For Senior Associates!

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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