As most of Biglaw still can’t figure out how to match the new Milbank scale, Desmarais LLP is out here blowing it away for its most junior team members.
Which isn’t really a surprise… this is a firm that has treated beating the market as a personality trait since roughly 2012 when it made the salary mantra “NY to $180” a reality years ahead of the rest of the industry. Now, the elite IP litigation boutique has informed associates and summer associates that its base salaries are going up effective July 1.
And it’s extra good news for attorneys in their first three years.
The class of 2022 catches up with the market, but while the rest of the industry leans slightly away from juniors, Desmarais is sweetening the pot for young lawyers it can train up to elite IP litigators.
But just because compensation catches up with Biglaw at more senior levels, the whole story gets missed by the match-or-don’t-match tables. A fifth-year at a Milbank-scale firm earns that $385,000 by chasing a soul-crushing billable hour target, while the Desmarais associate earning the same doesn’t live under the tyranny of the billable hour. Desmarais doesn’t bill by the hour — the firm charges clients by litigation stage and result — and consequently imposes no hourly targets. That’s not to say the firm isn’t working hard, but there’s a psychological benefit to not having to stare at your numbers in November, trying to figure out what you can plausibly do to still make a bonus.
That sort of math is fine for tax lawyers, but don’t make the litigators suffer!
Congratulations to everyone at Desmarais.
Remember everyone, we depend on your tips to stay on top of this stuff. 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’ll 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.
(Check out memo on the next page…)
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.