Milbank’s banner year rolls on. The firm rewrote Biglaw’s salary scale in June, stacked special summer bonuses on top, and waved its incoming class in early because business was too good to wait. The latest chapter in Milbank’s 2026 is its arrival in Chicago.
The firm announced Monday that it’s opening an office in Chicago, a new market for a firm that sets the going rate everywhere that counts… even most of Biglaw hasn’t actually signed onto yet. The promised wave of matches has been more of a trickle. Plenty of firms, many of Chicago’s homegrown giants among them, still haven’t put the new numbers in writing. Everyone assumes they will… but so far, they haven’t announced a thing.
Which makes Milbank’s timing pointed. It’s arriving as the highest bidder in a town where the locals — Kirkland, Sidley, Mayer Brown, Winston & Strawn, Jenner — have so far stayed quiet on the new scale. A price-setting competitor recruiting on your home turf tends to concentrate the mind on comp.
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Leading the flag-planting is Nadav Klugman, a renewable-energy and project-finance partner Milbank poached from White & Case, where he co-headed the global project development and finance practice. He’ll be based in the new Chicago office once it opens, joining the firm’s Global Project, Energy & Infrastructure Finance Group. Chairman Scott Edelman was upfront that this is a talent play, calling Chicago “an important new market for the firm to attract first-level talent that will allow us to better serve our clients.”
So the pressure just changed shape for Chicago’s Biglaw stalwarts. It’s one thing to quietly wait out a salary bump announced from New York. It’s another when the firm that set the number opens down the street and starts hiring. Chicago firms, the clock that’s been ticking all summer just got a lot louder.
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