No. 2 Biglaw Firm In America Finally Announces Market-Beating Bonuses

That's a lot of money! (But it was even more money last year.)

money briefcaseGood things come with patience, and if you’re an associate at Latham who was waiting for a bonus, your patience has been rewarded with pretty good things.

Latham & Watkins — a firm that brought in $5,488,778,000 gross revenue in 2021, placing it at No. 2 in the most recent Am Law 100 ranking — is known for announcing its year-end bonuses in January, and they usually beat the going market rate. Today, the firm finally announced its bonuses, and even though associates had to wait for the cash, they’re probably pretty happy about what’s getting deposited into their bank accounts.

Bonuses at Latham come with a billable requirement of 1900 hours, but they also give extra money for those who are billing above that threshold. And, from the looks of it, Latham associates have been busy — but perhaps not as busy as they were last year. The base bonuses are at market levels, but the median bonuses for every class year (sometimes just barely) beat the market rate. And the top bonuses are way, way over what the market gives out.

The firm circulated the below chart internally, and you can get a sense of just how generous bonuses are at Latham (full memo on the next page):

Latham Bonus 2022

(It’s worth mentioning that last year, top bonuses at Latham were a bit higher than the 2022 bonuses the firm is offering. For the 2021 bonus cycle, the top bonus for first-years was $32,000, while the top bonus for seventh-years was $184,000. Take from that what you will about the available hours associates at the firm were able to bill.)

Bonus-eligible associates at the firm will receive their payouts on January 31. Congratulations to everyone at the firm!

(Flip to the next page to see the memo from Latham & Watkins.)

Remember everyone, we depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when your firm announces or 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 your help!


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.


Bonus Time

Enter your email address to sign up for ATL's Bonus & Salary Increase Alerts.