Biglaw Firm Shares The Wealth, Raises Salaries For All

Very exciting news! Congratulations!

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Biglaw firms across the country continue to hand out special bonuses to associates and counsel as a way to thank them for their dedication during the pandemic — and to keep them around amid an incredibly hot lateral market. Other firms are going a step further and instituting salary increases, raising those in major markets to the standard Biglaw salary scale (if they weren’t already there), and others in smaller markets by tens of thousands of dollars.

Following DLA Piper’s decision earlier this spring to increase base pay for associates in some offices, a handful of other firms have followed in the firm’s footsteps, and now yet another has fallen in line.

According to emails sent by management earlier this week at Ice Miller, an Am Law 200 firm, effective July 1, 2021, all full-time associates and partner-track counsel will receive at least a $20,000 raise. With this raise comes an 1,850 billable hours expectation, and adjustments to the firm’s bonus plan will also be made in connection with these salary increases.

This is what starting salaries will look like going forward at the firm’s major market (New York and D.C.), middle market (Philadelphia and Chicago), and smaller market (Indianapolis and Columbus) offices:

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In terms of bonuses, sources say the the firm has announced that they’ll be capped because “we want people to have a little balance in their lives and don’t want to encourage more than 2,200 hours.” This is what bonuses at each of Ice Miller’s offices will look like in 2021:

Congratulations to everyone at the firm who just got a big raise, and congratulations to everyone who will be receiving bigger bonuses. Associates are quite happy, and this is something we absolutely love to see.

Please help us help you when it comes to bonus or raise news at other firms. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Raises”) 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.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Raise Alerts, 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.

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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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