Biglaw Firm Goes All Punitive With New, Stricter Hours Requirements To Get Bonus Money
Get ready to bill even more in 2019.
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New year, new bonus structure. That’s the word over at Cadwalader. Back in November they announced bonuses on the market scale, assuming associates billed 1,800 hours, with a 20 percent bump for high billers. But now they’ve decided that in order to get their full bonuses during the next bonus cycle, associates will have to bill an additional 100 hours.
As one tipster notes, it was only a few years ago that Cadwalader had no hours requirement, and the latest increase seems part of a disturbing trend:
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Cadwalader is already regretting its generosity and dialing back expectations for next year. The managing partner sent an email today announcing the bonus threshold will be raised by 100 hours next year.
Compounding the associate headache is the trajectory of CWT bonus policy—only a couple of years ago, the firm had no bonus minimum. So we’ve gone from no minimum to a minimum to now a higher minimum.
Yes, we know: 1,900 hours isn’t the highest threshold in the industry — far from it. But as sources point out coming off of what the firm describes as a strong year, the new rule really stings:
To be sure, 1,900 is still below a lot of peer firms and in line with the market. But that doesn’t explain why this announcement comes on the heels of talking about how CWT had such a strong year, and how partner profits in the last announced year were up — among the highest percentage jumps in the AmLaw 100. If we’re in such boom times, why cut associate benefits now? At least have the decency to wait for a recession.
Cheers to increased billing in 2019.
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Read the Cadwalader email on the next page.
If your firm makes a change to their bonus program please let us know! You can email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”) or text us (646-820-8477). 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.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. 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).
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