Associate Bonus Watch

Associate Bonus Watch 2011

Associate Bonus Watch: It’s Cahill Time (aka Time for Cravath Associates To Feel Bad, Again)

Last year, Cravath initially low-balled the bonus market, and Cahill Gordon made them look foolish by using the Cravath scale as a floor for its bonuses. This year, Cravath has come out with another crappy bonus scale, and Cahill is beating the bag out of it again. This year, Cahill is making a "special bonus" payment right now, in time for everybody's next paycheck. This is before they even delve into the regular year-end bonuses that Cravath has set at such a low mark. So just how special are these special bonuses?

Associate Bonus Watch 2011

Associate Bonus Watch: Paul Weiss Matches

Bonuses have just been announced at Paul Weiss. The firm is matching what we’ll call the Cleary Gottlieb scale, which seems to be the most generous bonus schedule among the main-line law firms (i.e., excluding outliers like Boies Schiller and Wachtell Lipton). The Cleary scale provides for (1) prorated bonuses for class of 2011 members […]

Associate Bonus Watch 2011

Associate Bonus Watch: Davis Polk Matches

The pulchritudinous law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell just announced its year-end bonuses. Are they as hot as DPW attorneys? Apparently not. One of the sources who sent it our way had this one-word summary: "Ugh." Said a second: "Bummed but not surprised." Is there a stub bonus for the class of 2011? What about mention of spring bonuses?

Associate Bonus Watch 2011

Associate Bonus Watch: Kaye Scholer Tries to Confuse By Matching Cravath’s Year-End Bonus and Last Year’s Spring Bonus

Read carefully, because Kaye Scholer is hoping you won't. The firm announced a match of the Cravath regular bonus from this season. And a match of the Cravath spring bonus from last season. But that has nothing to do with this season's spring bonus, which Sullivan & Cromwell alluded to. Keeping you apprised of the latest bonus shenanigans is what Above the Law is here for....

Akin Gump

Keeping Up With the Cravathians: The Ten Most Generous (or Foolish?) Law Firms

Cravath is among the most profitable firms in the world. We thought it would be interesting to see what the implications of matching Cravath are for those firms with much lower profit margins. Which firms’ partners willingly take the biggest hit by keeping up? Are these firms arguably more “generous”? After the jump, check out those firms that pay the largest percentage of PPP in bonuses....

Associate Bonus Watch 2011

Associate Bonus Watch: Proskauer Matches

Let's keep the bonus news rolling. On Friday, our sources reported that Proskauer Rose matched the Cravath 2011 bonus scale. We now have the official firm memo. Apparently this news is likely to anger many Proskauer associates. Given that fact, we're not exactly sure why the firm was eager to be one of the early adopters of Cravath's bonus scale....

Associate Bonus Watch 2011

Bonus Season Blues

Perhaps you’ve already heard that Cravath announced its 2011 bonus scale on Monday (swiftly followed by Skadden and Milbank), and apparently it’s 2009 all over again. We can’t help but wonder if this bonus season’s dyspepsia is typical of lawyers and law students generally....