The world’s largest litigation-only firm is reportedly matching the new Milbank salary scale, effective July 1, 2026. Associates across Quinn Emanuel will see raises of $10,000 to $20,000 depending on class year, with the more senior associates landing the bigger bumps, the same structure as the Milbank announcement.
And of course Quinn is matching the prevailing market rate. The firm matched in 2016 when the modern salary wars kicked off. It fell right in line in 2018. It was one of the first to match Cravath in 2022. And lest we forget, in 2023, the firm handed out special fall bonuses that topped out at nearly $33,000 for associates billing serious hours. Quinn Emanuel does not mess around when it comes to paying its people.
Because the firm can absolutely afford it. Quinn Emanuel partners are taking home payouts of around $9 million for 2025, putting them in the extremely rare company of Kirkland & Ellis and Wachtell Lipton as the only large law firms to crack that threshold. The firm looked at $2.7 billion in revenue for 2025, a 10 percent increase over 2024. When your partners are printing money at that level, matching a Milbank scale isn’t a hard decision. It’s just math.
So congratulations to Quinn Emanuel associates, $10K to $20K richer as of July 1, and working at a firm that has never once needed to be dragged into a salary increase. That counts for something.
Now, who’s next?
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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1