This Boutique Firm Is Showering Associates With Bonus Bucks
That's a lot of money!
A bigger firm is not always better when it comes to compensation. Time and time again, we’ve seen boutique firms deliver bonuses that really pack a punch when compared to their Biglaw competition.
On that note, Reid Collins & Tsai, an Austin-based litigation boutique continues to offer bonuses that break the bank for associates. While Biglaw firms are busy conducting layoffs due to the faltering economy, Reid Collins — a firm that was founded during the recession, with a heavy focus on fraud and insolvency litigation — is handing out bonus after bonus to its associates.
According to a chart from the firm, attorneys in all class years are likely to receive bonuses that, on average, beat what the market has to offer:
We’ve been told that to date in 2022, associate bonuses are in the healthy six digits for most, with another round of bonuses scheduled for January 2023. Associates who have really hit it out of the park with unique achievements have received sizable bonus awards this year.
Why does this compensation system work so well for the firm? For that, we turn to Managing Partner, Lisa S. Tsai. Here’s what she had to say:
“We attribute a lot of our success to the way we choose to pay and treat our people. From the start, our firm has been laser focused on operating as a meritocracy. We want to reward our attorneys for the good work they are doing and the results they are generating, not their law school graduation year or the number of hours they are billing. That is why a junior associate who is only two years out of law school earned a $200,000 bonus in a single bonus round this year. And that is also why we handed out $1 million bonuses to two non-equity partners this year too. In that sense, we are not simply outperforming the market scale, we are reinventing the market metrics altogether.”
Congratulations to everyone at Reid Collins & Tsai on a fantastic year!
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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.
