Top 20 Biglaw Firm Welcomes Lawyers Back To Office, But Without Raises (Yet)
It's time to put up or shut up: show associates the money if you want them back in the office.
What is it with Biglaw firms announcing their return-to-office plans before they announce their Milbank matches? Come on, let’s think about incentivizing employees here, folks. No one really wants to head back to the office during an ongoing pandemic, but a bigger paycheck might make it a little more palatable.
One of the firms that made its office return plan known prior to informing employees that there would be no salary match to come just yet is Weil Gotshal, a firm that’s in the top 20 of the Am Law 100 (No. 17, to be exact).
Earlier this week, the firm sent out a brief memo letting associates know that its US offices would be reopening fully on February 28. Weil followed up with a town hall meeting where salaries were discussed, but no raises came, and according to some sources, they didn’t even seem imminent. In a recent Instagram story, BigLawBoiz summarized the situation quite perfectly.
All empires fall indeed.
What are these firms waiting for? The $215K salary scale is here, and associate compensation reaching these heights was inevitable. Match this money before Biglaw is broken down into salary tiers and your firm is left in the cold.
As soon as you find out about reopening plans at your firm, please email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Office Reopening”) or text us at (646) 820-8477. We always keep our sources on stories anonymous. There’s no need to send a memo (if one exists) using your firm email account; your personal email account is fine. If a memo has been circulated, please be sure to include it as proof; we like to post complete 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. Thanks.
Staci 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.
