Biglaw

Fall Bonuses Are Great But Remember The Incoming Associates Struggling To Make It To Their Start Dates

These incoming associates aren't in a great position right now.

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(Image via Getty)

We’ve been treated to a string of good news from the biggest law firms in the world lately. Many have reversed the salary cutbacks instituted at the beginning of the COVID recession and several have brought joy to their associates with new Fall bonuses to sweeten the pot. Of course, not every firm is in the giving mood right now, but the clear momentum of the Biglaw universe is in favor of bonuses to reward attorneys who’ve managed to keep these firms profitable while the rest of society collapsed.

Lost in the autumn compensation news are the incoming first-year associates who have had their start dates put off as firms try to weather the storm. To some extent, this is a product of bar examiners continually pushing the exam farther into the future as disastrous wrinkles keep cropping up. But beyond the bar exam, firms just don’t want new associates joining up right now when they feel — rightly or wrongly — that they can’t properly train them remotely and worry that they don’t have enough work to get the recent grads engaged.

From the perspective of the firms, it’s not an absurd position. I entered as a first year while my firm huddled in borrowed office space after Cleary Gottlieb lost access to its offices being based next door to the World Trade Center and I never really felt like a functioning associate until we moved back into the real offices and I did actually have some semblance of in-person training. So I get why they don’t think adding people right now is feasible.

For the future associates themselves though, this is brutal. Some law firms are paying these folks who expected to start working, but many more are just offering salary advances… or nothing at all. While no one is complaining about having walking around money at this point, advances really just amount to asking associates to further borrow against their future interests, something they’ve functionally been doing for three years — if not seven — already. Deferring the hit they’re taking right now over the next few years is better than nothing, but amounts to yet another roadblock to getting started as financially independent beings.

Worse, law school health coverage is coming to an end for a lot of these graduates and some law firms aren’t stepping up to at the very least add incoming associates to the plan during a pandemic. This obviously isn’t true of all firms — checking the ATL tracker, it looks like Reed Smith and Troutman Pepper have enrollment options and Orrick is offering a health care stipend (perhaps others… this is a reminder for firms to let us know so we can highlight you) — but firms that haven’t offered this as a minimum have put grads in the position of trying to find health insurance, which can often still leave people uncovered with arbitrary beginning and end dates.

Imagine sitting at the end of September with no job until at least January, going further in debt, without health insurance, and with bar examiners saying this seems like a perfectly reasonable time to take a slapdash test.

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And then imagine hearing that your firm is handing everyone already over there a big bonus. This isn’t meant to begrudge the associates who’ve busted their asses to keep billing from home, but we should take a second or two to consider the impossible circumstances we’re foisting upon the class of 2020.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior 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. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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