Top 100 Biglaw Firm Matches Market Bonuses — With Even More Money For High Billers
Associates with loads of billables are going to be making loads of cash.
More and more Biglaw firms are matching Milbank’s incredibly generous bonus scale, with year-end bonuses and special bonuses ranging up to $140,000 for associates.
On Friday afternoon, Cadwalader entered the bonus market with a Milbank match. We believe the firm — which brought in $551,630,000 gross revenue in 2023, putting it at No. 94 on the Am Law 100 — is the first outside of the Am Law Top 50, excluding boutiques, to make this match. Here’s what bonuses looks like at Cadwalader:
And that’s not all! Associates who have recorded 2,200 client billable hours or more will receive bonuses equal to 120% of the firm’s year-end bonus amounts. Very exciting news for those who are billing overtime.
Congratulations to everyone at Cadwalader! You can look forward to seeing the money in your accounts by or before the end of February 2025.
(Flip to the next page to read the full memo from the firm.)
Remember everyone, we depend on your tips to stay on top of compensation updates, so when your firm announces or matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus/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 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 X/Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.
