Biglaw

Are Biglaw Associates Billing Themselves To The Brink Of Exhaustion For Subpar Bonuses?

Bonuses are coming... but they might not be big enough.

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It’s been almost one week since Baker McKenzie unexpectedly kicked off Biglaw’s 2020 bonus season, and the announcement has been met with crickets. To be honest, no one thought Baker of all firms would be the one to make the first move, and based on associates’ responses to our annual bonus and billable hours survey, no one really thought this year’s bonus scale would be announced as early as it was due to the ongoing pandemic. Thirty-four percent of our respondents think a big bonus announcement will drop sometime this week, while 33 percent think it will come next week. As a reminder, last year, bonuses were announced on November 7, and the year before that, bonuses were announced just before Thanksgiving, in the second to last week of November.

When do you think 2020 bonuses will be announced?

  • Next week (Nov. 16 - 20) (34%, 116 Votes)
  • Last full week of November (Nov. 23 - 27) (33%, 112 Votes)
  • First week of December (Nov. 30 - Dec. 4) (22%, 76 Votes)
  • This week (Nov. 9 - 13) (10%, 34 Votes)

Total Voters: 338

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Based on past precedent, it seems much more likely that if Cravath is the first firm to announce after Baker McKenzie, bonuses should be expected on either Monday, November 23 or Monday, November 30. This seems really far away, but Cravath tends to stick a schedule as far as these things are concerned, and in recent years, it has announced its bonus news on either the last Monday in November or the first Monday in the first week of December (this year, the first Monday in the first week of December is… November 30, oops). But with Milbank in the mix, it’s really hard to say what will happen. The firm announced last year’s bonus scale on the first Thursday of November and it announced the $190K salary scale on the first Monday of June back in 2018. The firm seems to like to announce things during the first week of the month, and that’s already come and gone. Unfortunately, there may no rhyme or reason when it comes to the rest of this year’s big bonus announcements.

While associates are busy counting down the hours until Bonus Day, they’re likely even busier counting up the hours they’re on track to bill in 2020 to meet their targets for bonus eligibility. Just how much are associates expected to bill during a worldwide health crisis? The answer is: still quite a lot. About 66 percent of our survey respondents are on track to bill 2000 hours or more (much more, actually) in 2020.

Here are the full results from our survey:

How many hours are you on track to bill in 2020?

  • More than 2400 (18%, 143 Votes)
  • 2000 - 2099 (17%, 137 Votes)
  • 2100 - 2199 (14%, 110 Votes)
  • 1900 - 1999 (11%, 83 Votes)
  • 2200 - 2299 (10%, 76 Votes)
  • 1800 - 1899 (9%, 69 Votes)
  • Fewer than 1600 (7%, 58 Votes)
  • 2300 - 2399 (7%, 54 Votes)
  • 1600 - 1699 (4%, 29 Votes)
  • 1700 - 1799 (3%, 27 Votes)

Total Voters: 786

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Remember these strong numbers when bonuses begin to hit bank accounts. You may have worked your Biglaw bums off, but 80 percent of survey respondents thought that this year’s bonuses would be no different than last year’s bonuses, not including COVID bonuses — and they were right. Baker McKenzie’s bonus scale is last year’s bonus scale, and no mention of additional bonuses in light of the coronavirus crisis was made. Davis Polk set the standard on those bonuses, which ranged from $7,500 to $40,000. Keep this in mind, associates (and Biglaw management): If 2020’s year-end bonuses are the exact same as 2019’s year-end bonuses, total bonus compensation in 2020 will be substantially lower, since associates at many high-end firms also received appreciation bonuses in generous amounts earlier this fall.

Either way, Biglaw associates can soon look forward to their bank accounts being stuffed like the Thanksgiving turkeys they’ll gobble down next week.

As a little reminder, we love 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 — including, of course, the first such announcement.

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Keep your fingers crossed for happy bonus news this season!

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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