Biglaw

Weil Offers A New Take On Fall Bonuses -- They're Hours-Based, And They're HUGE

For big billers, that is. Have you billed enough to make bank?

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Another elite Biglaw firm has stepped out to join the COVID-19 bonus wars, and this time, it’s all about the hours. Let’s get this party started.

Over at Weil Gotshal, the more hours you’ve billed, the more money you’ll get. For most firms that came before this announcement, bonuses were simply based on associate class year. We’ll do a quick comparison of the bonus scales. Here’s an excerpt from a memo that was sent by Weil executive partner Barry Wolf (available in full on the next page), explaining why the firm is doing things this way, and what their bonus schedule looks like:

We recognize that, given varying client demand levels, the workloads taken on to meet the increased demand we have faced during this period were not equally shared.  To account for these differences, we will be paying the bonus out not by class year but by the schedule set forth below based on annualized hours worked during this calendar year (January 1 – August 31).

  • Below 1800 hours – $10,000
  • 1800-1999 hours – $20,000
  • 2000-2299 hours – $30,000
  • 2300-2599 hours – $40,000
  • More than 2600 hours – $50,000

WOW, a $50,000 bonus — that sure sounds nice! Now, let’s take a look at the Davis Polk scale again, so we can see how things measure up:

  • Class of 2019: $7,500
  • Class of 2018: $10,000
  • Class of 2017: $20,000
  • Class of 2016: $27,500
  • Class of 2015: $32,500
  • Class of 2014: $37,000
  • Class of 2013: $40,000

The most relevant question here seems to be, how many people at Weil will wind up worse off than they would if the firm had broken these bonuses down by class year? It’s incredibly easy to offer a $50K bonus when you know that only a few people will qualify for one. Thus far, we haven’t heard any complaints, so we’ll have to wait and see how things shake out.

UPDATE (4:25 p.m.): Hold that thought, because some people are not at all thrilled with these bonuses. “[P]artners have been telling associates to limit billing to clients and bill excess to nonbillable and have not been giving out billable work despite requests for it,” says one disappointed associate. Yikes. Here are some additional thoughts from another one of our sources at Weil:

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[A]ssociates are not happy. After encouraging associates to take vacation in August, the firm cuts off annualizing hours are the end of that month. The joke is on you if you took that vacation! It is also a very odd way of doing things for a firm with “no hours requirement.” For a senior associate to make market, this memo imposes a minimum of 2,300 hours. Bankruptcy associates are maybe the only ones happy with this. Everyone else is pissed.

UPDATE (9/25): It seems like there are incredibly mixed feelings about this bonus over at Weil. Here’s what we’ve heard from several sources at the firm.

Incredibly disappointing and so out of line with firm culture (or at least what I thought was firm culture…) and how the firm’s always emphasized the benefits of NOT tying billables to bonuses. Now all that seems disingenuous. This is particularly insensitive since the “worse off” here are likely disproportionately the more senior associates dealing with kids at home for several months.

Weil’s bonus structure is a slap in the face for working moms left without childcare during the pandemic. In order to bill some of those amounts, you would have to be committing child abuse/neglect!

For the Weil bonus structure, it punishes working parents who have had less availability to bill their typical amounts do to child care constraints.

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Weil brags publicly about not having a billable hours requirement, but for some reason this bonus is hours-based.  For anyone out there watching from home, this should be suspect on its face.  This hours-based, tier structure is merely intended to give the firm cover to cheap out on the otherwise lockstep special bonuses being paid by Weil peer firms.

The bonuses across the market at other firms are NOT dependent on high billing.  Those other bonuses are (appropriately) compensating for particularly difficult and stressful factors that people having to work from home have been dealing with — e.g., working from home and simultaneously providing child care, homeschooling their kids, not having a dedicated quiet work space in a cramped NYC apartment, etc. — all while the firm is saving money on operating costs.  Sure, giving very high billers a larger bonus is certainly nice, but it should not be at the expense of dinging associates in groups that are slower or where associates are being encouraged to not bill all of their time.

Senior associate at Weil here. The bonus is BS. You know the partners sat there calculating on one hand how many people are annualizing 2600. Similarly, the slow folks who are annualizing 1500 hours also get 10k? How does that make any sense.

I’m an associate at Weil (not in BFR) and am very happy with bonuses being tied to hours, as are many of my colleagues since many ppl have above-average hours. Saw a comment you posted that folks vacationing in August are unhappy. Could be, but annualizing hours takes into account vacation so vacation between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31 would actually increase an associate’s total annualized hours.

Reading the comments about Weil, I have only heard of one person who is disappointed because they were senior and their hours were low. Most associates are making out far better, especially junior associates who are getting double, triple, or even quadruple what they would have expected under the Davis Polk scale. I’ve never had someone tell me not to bill my time, and have been getting plenty of work. Also note they are including pro Bono hours in the calculation, so if you were slow you could have picked up ample opportunities to do great pro Bono work, which the firm frequently encouraged. This is incredible and everyone is talking about how they are going to spend their new found money! Weil is crushing it.

I hate that associates are reporting they’re not happy about the Weil bonuses. From the groups I’ve been talking to, everyone is thrilled (and I’m not a bankruptcy attorney). Additionally, the secondees who helped in other practice groups who were slammed, and the bankruptcy attorneys that have been working around the clock, really feel appreciated. #Weil’dAboutWeil

Perhaps most important of all, Wolf notes in his memo that this fall bonus “will not impact the year-end bonuses that will be paid in January 2021” and that those bonuses will be “at least equal to those paid in January 2020.”

Congratulations to everyone at Weil on their bonuses.

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 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.

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Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked 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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