With a wave of its wand, the very first Magic Circle firm has cast a spell to summon tens of thousands of dollars into the bank accounts of its deserving associates. Congratulations!
This afternoon, in a memorandum emailed from global head of U.S. practice Tom Shropshire (who is currently in London), Linklaters announced that it would be matching the Cravath bonus scale for all of its U.S. associates, worldwide. Bonus payouts to associates will be made on December 22, 2017. The firm took so “long” to announce its bonuses this week that it didn’t even feel the need to include the relevant scale in its memo. The full memo, complete with a cutesy subject line “The one e-mail from me everyone will read…,” is on the next page.
Linklaters being the first Magic Circle firm to match this year’s market bonuses speaks volumes. When will the rest of the firm’s cohorts with U.S. offices — Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, and Freshfields — conjure up cash for their associates?
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That’s our take on the Linklaters bonuses. If you’re a lawyer at the firm, what do you think? Feel free to let us know how you feel by email, by text message (646-820-8477), or by tweet (@ATLblog). A fun or insightful response — we promise we’ll keep you anonymous — could find its way into an update to this story.
(Flip to the next page to see the Linklaters bonus announcement.)
As a little reminder, we love covering the Biglaw bonus season, but we need your help. Remember: as soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”). We always keep our sources on bonus stories anonymous. There’s no need to send the memo using your firm email account; your personal email account is fine. Please be sure to include the memo as proof; we like to post complete bonus memos as a service to our readers. You can take a photo of the memo and attach as a picture if you are worried about metadata in a PDF or Word file. You can also text us at 646-820-8477. We look forward to hearing from you.
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Staci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law 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.