Announcing 2022 Special Bonuses Forum

[Anonymous User]

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[Anonymous User]

I literally get 15 thirsty lateral recruitment emails per day for patent litigation. And the associate annualized average thus far at my firm is 2000. That's exactly what it was last year.

Reed Smith is not a bellwether of Biglaw, and Cooley's "hiring freeze" is limited just to some corporate practice groups.

Maybe some patent lit specific law firms will give special bonuses then!

But for biglaw in general, special bonuses are not happening. Reed Smith and Cooley are great bellwethers for biglaw generally - if a journalist is able to get sources for hiring freezes at “some corporate practice groups” at those firms, it’s indicative of a general market malaise that rules out special bonuses. Idk why this is even an argument. I want more money too, you just have to know what’s realistic right now.

But my firm is NOT patent-specific, and average annualized hours (for associates overall, which is the most granular our system gets) are the same this year as they were the last year. PPP of my firm is a bit over $4.5m, so probably a better bellwether than Reed Smith for firms that actually move the market. No?

[Anonymous User]

Frankly, if firms were to advertise first year roles as foot-in-the-door Biglaw opportunities and pay minimum wage, they’d still have candidates. It’d include some hard working grinder types who’d actually do a decent job. Profitability and PEP are the name of the game, friends. Associates are fungible, and are often willing to do a lot to have jobs, so they can achieve whatever we tell them are worthy long term goals (or simply to avoid the disgrace of being stealthed).

This is such a clueless comment, which sounds like the wet dream of some boomer partner. Are you unaware of the problems the industry has had with retention the past 2.5 years? And staffing? And lateral competition? Associates may be "fungible" in a theoretical sense but the experience of watching half of them depart (and then having to bring in another lot of them to try to plug the gaps) has been miserable and seems unsustainable. And there's no way people would do this job for min. wage they won't do it for 300, 400, 500k.

A lot of either bad takes or lousy trolls in the past few days in this thread.

[Anonymous User]

Frankly, if firms were to advertise first year roles as foot-in-the-door Biglaw opportunities and pay minimum wage, they’d still have candidates. It’d include some hard working grinder types who’d actually do a decent job. Profitability and PEP are the name of the game, friends. Associates are fungible, and are often willing to do a lot to have jobs, so they can achieve whatever we tell them are worthy long term goals (or simply to avoid the disgrace of being stealthed).

This is such a clueless comment, which sounds like the wet dream of some boomer partner. Are you unaware of the problems the industry has had with retention the past 2.5 years? And staffing? And lateral competition? Associates may be "fungible" in a theoretical sense but the experience of watching half of them depart (and then having to bring in another lot of them to try to plug the gaps) has been miserable and seems unsustainable. And there's no way people would do this job for min. wage they won't do it for 300, 400, 500k.

A lot of either bad takes or lousy trolls in the past few days in this thread.

Yup, if there's any lasting lesson firms need to take from the last decade or so, it's that they need to think about long term staffing needs and maintaining a steady pipeline of midlevels and seniors.

[Ultramar vistas]

I literally get 15 thirsty lateral recruitment emails per day for patent litigation. And the associate annualized average thus far at my firm is 2000. That's exactly what it was last year.

Reed Smith is not a bellwether of Biglaw, and Cooley's "hiring freeze" is limited just to some corporate practice groups.

Maybe some patent lit specific law firms will give special bonuses then!

But for biglaw in general, special bonuses are not happening. Reed Smith and Cooley are great bellwethers for biglaw generally - if a journalist is able to get sources for hiring freezes at “some corporate practice groups” at those firms, it’s indicative of a general market malaise that rules out special bonuses. Idk why this is even an argument. I want more money too, you just have to know what’s realistic right now.

But my firm is NOT patent-specific, and average annualized hours (for associates overall, which is the most granular our system gets) are the same this year as they were the last year. PPP of my firm is a bit over $4.5m, so probably a better bellwether than Reed Smith for firms that actually move the market. No?

No.

[Excellent117]

I literally get 15 thirsty lateral recruitment emails per day for patent litigation. And the associate annualized average thus far at my firm is 2000. That's exactly what it was last year.

Reed Smith is not a bellwether of Biglaw, and Cooley's "hiring freeze" is limited just to some corporate practice groups.

Yeah because Patent litigation and people working 2k hours is what drove the bonus hype last year...

Typical non-STEM retard. The statement was that the AVERAGE annualized hours are the same between this year and last year, meaning the m&a slump this year was offset substantially by higher hours in other practices.

Choose a different word.

[Anonymous User]

I literally get 15 thirsty lateral recruitment emails per day for patent litigation. And the associate annualized average thus far at my firm is 2000. That's exactly what it was last year.

Reed Smith is not a bellwether of Biglaw, and Cooley's "hiring freeze" is limited just to some corporate practice groups.

Yeah because Patent litigation and people working 2k hours is what drove the bonus hype last year...

Typical non-STEM retard. The statement was that the AVERAGE annualized hours are the same between this year and last year, meaning the m&a slump this year was offset substantially by higher hours in other practices.

Choose a different word.

I'm the second quoted anon and I actually have a degree in physics, but that's beside the point because I learned my manners somewhere else: using that word in this context is atrocious, regardless of what degree you have. Whether or not I'm right does not excuse your ignorance, so go wash your mouth out please and thank you.

But you also missed my point, so let me spell it out for you. First, I referred to patent lit because you talked about recruiting emails. There have ALWAYS been a lot of patent lit recruiting emails - it's a niche field that is, by nature of the work and those qualified to do it, inherently shorthanded. Your 15 emails a day prove nothing. I work in patent lit and understand that it's booming and lateraling is hot, but that's nothing new. More importantly, it's also never going to drive bonuses. Don't flatter yourself, you and I are not that important.

Second, I focused on your point about 2k hours, not consistent average hours, also for good reason. If you actually followed what happened during the pandemic, you would have seen that the problem wasn't necessarily that everyone's hours were high. To the contrary, lots of groups were slow. The problem was actually that many corporate practices were SO busy that people got fed up and left, which compounded. If you looked at the distribution of hours the last two years my guess is it was bimodal with two peaks far from the mean. Lateral bonuses became a huge thing, and firms started paying up to try to keep corporate monkeys planted. So matching last year's average hours means diddly squat. What matters is whether certain (typically more profitable and leveraged) practices are so busy that they need to offer bonuses to everyone to maintain the ranks. It sounds like that's no longer the case.

To be clear, profits were gangbusters so it can't be that the mean remained constant (you can't explain that away with reduced costs). But if firms can find a way to maintain that mean while spreading the hours out more evenly, they can pocket those profits and drop the retention bonuses like a hot potato. If corporate groups remain slow, you bet your ass that's what's going to happen this year.

Sorry if that's too much math for you...