Biglaw

DLA Piper Makes Major Money Moves With Its Bonus Announcement, And Associates Are Thrilled

No more black-box bonuses at this Biglaw firm!

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Well, well, well, what do have we here? Could it be? Is it … a Cravath match? Yes, finally. And not only is it a Cravath match, but it’s a “Cravath Match+” (a new term, let’s go with it) from a firm that used to issue black-box bonuses.

Welcome to December, Biglaw!

DLA Piper — a Biglaw behemoth that brought in $3,133,829,000 gross revenue in 2020, putting it in 3rd place in the most recent Am Law 100 ranking — announced bonuses earlier this afternoon, and associates are quite pleased. This is a major change from last year, when associates described the firm’s year-end bonuses as “absolute horseshit.”

In 2021, DLA Piper is matching the Cravath scale, and offering even more money on top for associates who really went above and beyond during 2021. But wait, there’s more. The firm is decreasing its “production hours” threshold from 150 to 100 hours and making adjustments to its incremental hours bonus increases, upping them from 2020 levels and escalating them on a cumulative basis.

As co-managing U.S. partners Jackie Park and Rick Chesley note in the firm’s bonus memo, “The net effect of these modifications are potential bonus awards for our highest-rated and most productive associates of up to 50 percent or more overmarket.” Yowza! Here’s what the bonus scale looks like at DLA Piper:

We weren’t kidding when we said associates were pleased with the firm’s money moves this year. Here’s what a few of them had to say about DLA Piper’s bonuses.

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  • “Great to see this kind of transparency from a firm that has been pretty black box in the past. And yes, DLA associates in Phoenix are making at least as much as Cravath associates in NYC.”
  • “We received our bonus announcement today, and I cannot overstate how pleasantly surprised we all are. As many will recall, we took a hit last year with the way bonuses were rolled out. The firm listened and adjusted. Normally, our bonuses are never announced until mid-January at the earliest and often the system is not transparent. Times have changed. We are now clearly a market plus firm. The management is not just talking the talk about being elite and competing with the best. We are now walking the walk.”
  • “We are a firm on the rise that wants to and is competing with the elite, and this reflects that reality. Associates are thrilled at how management has adjusted from last year. The firm has been doing great and this just reaffirms to everyone that this is a great place to be moving forward. Tremendous job by our leadership.”

Congratulations to everyone at DLA Piper for finally escaping the black box and cashing in on these hefty bonus awards. Well done!

(Flip to the next page to read the full memo from DLA Piper.)

Remember everyone, we depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches”). 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 Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we also use for salary announcements), 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. Thanks for all of your help!

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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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