NYC to 200k Forum

[Anonymous User]

ATL now reporting on JD raise: https://abovethelaw.com/2018/06/jones-d ... s-at-190k/

[Anonymous User]

ATL now reporting on JD raise: https://abovethelaw.com/2018/06/jones-d ... s-at-190k/

I'm a little surprised more firms haven't moved on this yet.

[Anonymous User]

well we know dpw is too busy taking attendance

[Veronica2015]

Cravath's Bonus Scale in 2007:
Class of 2007 — Year end bonus $35,000 (prorated), no special bonus
Class of 2006 — Year end $35,000, special $10,000
Class of 2005 — Year end $40,000, special $15,000
Class of 2004 — Year end $45,000, special $20,000
Class of 2003 — Year end $50,000, special $30,000
Class of 2002 — Year end $55,000, special $40,000
Class of 2001 — Year end $60,000, special $50,000
Class of 2000 — Year end $60,000, special $50,000 (same as 2001)

Too lazy to find out if firms are making as much (if not more) money as they did prior to 2008. If yes, what they really need to do is to raise base to 200k and revive the above bonus scale.

I miss the prime days.

[Anonymous User]

What's the hold up? The partners must be out drinking away their sorrows before they have to trade in their Ferraris for Porsches.

[Anonymous User]

I don't understand why they are monitoring who is in? Can you not work from home at DPW or is this some kind of weird exercise to make sure how many people need to escape the burning building in an emergency?

The official line is that they need to update the internal directory so teams know who is in office versus working remotely. Bullshit though cuz no one really uses it.

ETA: They used to email us every morning to ask if we’re going to be in office but later moved to clipboard after we all ignored those

DPW on reddit today: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthin ... orning_at/

[Anonymous User]

Mid level here, corporate. I wouldn’t really say it’s accurate that perks have been cut back, they just never grew commensurate with our peers. The actual cuts have been in the support staff.

Some examples: our seamless budget is lower than our peers ($25 versus $35). They recently imposed a cap on callback lunches with 2Ls. Our high deductible health insurance deal kinda sucks but more firms are moving that way (but as counter point, S&C gets free health insurance). If we take a black car home at 8:15 instead of 8:30, we get a call from accounting asking why (even if we billed 10 hours+ that day). Our office situation for a lot of corporate groups is horrendous. We have senior associates (including 6th years) who still don’t have their own offices. Slightly different for litigators as there are less of them. They’re currently building internal offices but that will take some time to complete. Our laptops are legit from pre-2012 and the batttry life reflects that. We need to make special requests to enable the tethering on our firm phones for a specific period of time. Our holiday party is in the cafeteria. Many of our other social events are in the conference rooms, I think only the bigger summer events go offsite. We recently just got a tech stipend after associates committee complained for several years, but it still lags behind our peers who give a high dollar amount or reimburse home office expenses outright. Other instances of general cheapness and patronizing shit (e.g., M&A partners annoyed that people aren’t at their desks at 9:30 and now associates now up and down the seniority chain are being called in one by one and told to get to office earlier)

On the staff, first they got rid of assistants for all junior and mid level associates and moved to a shared pod system, which is in line with many firms. But then they replaced almost all of the non-partner assistants with non-DPW temp workers. They usually do shit work and aren’t reliable (prob cuz they get paid like shit with no benefits). Also, those temp assistants now walk around the floors every morning with a clipboard to mark who is in the office. There’s a legitimate reason why they need to do that but its irritating nonetheless. Then they made huge cuts to our word processing department to the point where it can take 1-2 days for simple formatting requests.

Tl;dr We’re not raising salaries unless Cravath makes us

What a TTT shithole. Wow.

[Anonymous User]

Cravath's Bonus Scale in 2007:
Class of 2007 — Year end bonus $35,000 (prorated), no special bonus
Class of 2006 — Year end $35,000, special $10,000
Class of 2005 — Year end $40,000, special $15,000
Class of 2004 — Year end $45,000, special $20,000
Class of 2003 — Year end $50,000, special $30,000
Class of 2002 — Year end $55,000, special $40,000
Class of 2001 — Year end $60,000, special $50,000
Class of 2000 — Year end $60,000, special $50,000 (same as 2001)

Too lazy to find out if firms are making as much (if not more) money as they did prior to 2008. If yes, what they really need to do is to raise base to 200k and revive the above bonus scale.

I miss the prime days.

Profits per partner are about a million dollars a year higher at the top ten firms than they were in 2007.

https://abovethelaw.com/2017/04/the-201 ... -biglaw/2/

https://www.abovethelaw.com/images/entr ... 20blog.JPG

[Anonymous User]

Cravath's Bonus Scale in 2007:
Class of 2007 — Year end bonus $35,000 (prorated), no special bonus
Class of 2006 — Year end $35,000, special $10,000
Class of 2005 — Year end $40,000, special $15,000
Class of 2004 — Year end $45,000, special $20,000
Class of 2003 — Year end $50,000, special $30,000
Class of 2002 — Year end $55,000, special $40,000
Class of 2001 — Year end $60,000, special $50,000
Class of 2000 — Year end $60,000, special $50,000 (same as 2001)

Too lazy to find out if firms are making as much (if not more) money as they did prior to 2008. If yes, what they really need to do is to raise base to 200k and revive the above bonus scale.

I miss the prime days.

Profits per partner are about a million dollars a year higher at the top ten firms than they were in 2007.

https://abovethelaw.com/2017/04/the-201 ... -biglaw/2/

https://www.abovethelaw.com/images/entr ... 20blog.JPG

It’s not so simple though. Lots of firms fuck around with reporting PPP. For example some firms report figures before accounting for pension outlays. Not doubting that firms are nickel and diming us more, just that reported PPP doesn’t tell full story

[Anonymous User]

Cravath's Bonus Scale in 2007:
Class of 2007 — Year end bonus $35,000 (prorated), no special bonus
Class of 2006 — Year end $35,000, special $10,000
Class of 2005 — Year end $40,000, special $15,000
Class of 2004 — Year end $45,000, special $20,000
Class of 2003 — Year end $50,000, special $30,000
Class of 2002 — Year end $55,000, special $40,000
Class of 2001 — Year end $60,000, special $50,000
Class of 2000 — Year end $60,000, special $50,000 (same as 2001)

Too lazy to find out if firms are making as much (if not more) money as they did prior to 2008. If yes, what they really need to do is to raise base to 200k and revive the above bonus scale.

I miss the prime days.

Profits per partner are about a million dollars a year higher at the top ten firms than they were in 2007.

https://abovethelaw.com/2017/04/the-201 ... -biglaw/2/

https://www.abovethelaw.com/images/entr ... 20blog.JPG

It’s not so simple though. Lots of firms fuck around with reporting PPP. For example some firms report figures before accounting for pension outlays. Not doubting that firms are nickel and diming us more, just that reported PPP doesn’t tell full story

[Anonymous User]

KE summers are literally kept in a massive pen because there are too many of them. No one can afford to raise salaries.

[Anonymous User]

KE summers are literally kept in a massive pen because there are too many of them. No one can afford to raise salaries.

why does hiring a shit ton of summers indicate they cant afford to raise salaries? the are pissing away like $100k a day in salaries for people to sit in a pen

[Anonymous User]

I presume "KE summers kept in a pen" references KE Houston? Or are you referencing other offices as well?

[Anonymous User]

KE summers are literally kept in a massive pen because there are too many of them. No one can afford to raise salaries.

while true that there are a lot of summers, we're going through a complete renovation of all practice floors (with a few floors totally shut down at a time), so we have less space available, hence the bullpen.

[Anonymous User]

I don't understand why they are monitoring who is in? Can you not work from home at DPW or is this some kind of weird exercise to make sure how many people need to escape the burning building in an emergency?

The official line is that they need to update the internal directory so teams know who is in office versus working remotely. Bullshit though cuz no one really uses it.

ETA: They used to email us every morning to ask if we’re going to be in office but later moved to clipboard after we all ignored those

DPW Corporate Associate here: the attendance stuff is misleading and blown way out of proportion. The "internal directory" or "411" is used by literally every single person in the firm. Everyone updates it when they get in or go on vacation or are at a meeting, etc. so people know how to get in touch with you. Most people keep a list of all their active matters on there as well as alternative contacts for those matters in case a partner or client needs to reach out to you or someone on the team about it. For attorneys, your assistant updates the 411 for you. When 1-3 yr associates lost their assistants and were assigned to an assistant pool, those associates were asked to update their 411 themselves when they got in the office, went on vacation, working from home, etc. No one did, since we were all used to our assistants doing it for us. Then they tried having the assistant pool email their assigned associates and ask them to update their 411 for the day if they hadn't already. No one responded or did it. So then you had a situation where literally everyone in the firm kept their 411 up to date, except 1-3 yr associates (yes, I know that's a lot of people, but that's besides the point). That's why they now have an assistant from the pool for 1-3 yr associates walk around to see if their assigned associates are in, so they can update your 411. And they don't come exactly at 9:30 - on my floor, the assistant comes around 10, and again around 10:30-11.

Can't speak to M&A partners calling associates in their office to tell them to get in earlier, but I know there are egregious offenders. All of this is not to say that there haven't been cost cutting measures - there definitely have. It was annoying when they got rid of assistants. I'm sure senior associate are pissed they have to share offices (although as mentioned, they are rolling out new internal offices, about ~100 of them, so this should be fixed soon). $25 seamless budget is hardly a real limit - I've gone to $30-35 and haven't had any issues. Black car thing I did get dinged on once when I took it home before 8:30. But that's literally only for the black car service, since it's expensive as fuck and clients won't pay for it. If you've billed all day and take a cab home at 7:30, there's no issue with that.

[minnbills]

ohai DPW partner

[Man from Nantucket]

I don't understand why they are monitoring who is in? Can you not work from home at DPW or is this some kind of weird exercise to make sure how many people need to escape the burning building in an emergency?

The official line is that they need to update the internal directory so teams know who is in office versus working remotely. Bullshit though cuz no one really uses it.

ETA: They used to email us every morning to ask if we’re going to be in office but later moved to clipboard after we all ignored those

DPW Corporate Associate here: the attendance stuff is misleading and blown way out of proportion. The "internal directory" or "411" is used by literally every single person in the firm. Everyone updates it when they get in or go on vacation or are at a meeting, etc. so people know how to get in touch with you. Most people keep a list of all their active matters on there as well as alternative contacts for those matters in case a partner or client needs to reach out to you or someone on the team about it. For attorneys, your assistant updates the 411 for you. When 1-3 yr associates lost their assistants and were assigned to an assistant pool, those associates were asked to update their 411 themselves when they got in the office, went on vacation, working from home, etc. No one did, since we were all used to our assistants doing it for us. Then they tried having the assistant pool email their assigned associates and ask them to update their 411 for the day if they hadn't already. No one responded or did it. So then you had a situation where literally everyone in the firm kept their 411 up to date, except 1-3 yr associates (yes, I know that's a lot of people, but that's besides the point). That's why they now have an assistant from the pool for 1-3 yr associates walk around to see if their assigned associates are in, so they can update your 411. And they don't come exactly at 9:30 - on my floor, the assistant comes around 10, and again around 10:30-11.

Can't speak to M&A partners calling associates in their office to tell them to get in earlier, but I know there are egregious offenders. All of this is not to say that there haven't been cost cutting measures - there definitely have. It was annoying when they got rid of assistants. I'm sure senior associate are pissed they have to share offices (although as mentioned, they are rolling out new internal offices, about ~100 of them, so this should be fixed soon). $25 seamless budget is hardly a real limit - I've gone to $30-35 and haven't had any issues. Black car thing I did get dinged on once when I took it home before 8:30. But that's literally only for the black car service, since it's expensive as fuck and clients won't pay for it. If you've billed all day and take a cab home at 7:30, there's no issue with that.

*6th year DPW associate excitedly chatting with office mate about decorating spiffy new internal office over a banquet of 7-11 taquitos ordered from seamless while uploading data from GPS tracker ankle bracelet to the central database*

[ghostoftraynor]

Surprisingly every other firm manages just fine without daily rollcall.

[Anonymous User]

ohai DPW partner

He/she needs to spend less time defending the indefensible/treating associates like interns and focus on raising salaries.

[rahulg91]

I think Weil or Paul Weiss are more likely than V5. Can’t speak to experience at S&C but they’ve run out of ways to cut costs over here at DPW re perks and staff. Zero chance we pay more than we have to

Can you be more precise. Where exactly did DPW cut costs re perks for associates?

You would get a shorter answer if you asked the opposite question.

Where did not DPW cut costs re perks for associates?

Would like to know about this (DPW cutting costs re perks) too, please. Can any DPW folks chime in?

Some examples: our seamless budget is lower than our peers ($25 versus $35). They recently imposed a cap on callback lunches with 2Ls. Our high deductible health insurance deal kinda sucks but more firms are moving that way (but as counter point, S&C gets free health insurance). If we take a black car home at 8:15 instead of 8:30, we get a call from accounting asking why (even if we billed 10 hours+ that day). Our office situation for a lot of corporate groups is horrendous. We have senior associates (including 6th years) who still don’t have their own offices. Slightly different for litigators as there are less of them. They’re currently building internal offices but that will take some time to complete. Our laptops are legit from pre-2012 and the batttry life reflects that. We need to make special requests to enable the tethering on our firm phones for a specific period of time. Our holiday party is in the cafeteria. Many of our other social events are in the conference rooms, I think only the bigger summer events go offsite. We recently just got a tech stipend after associates committee complained for several years, but it still lags behind our peers who give a high dollar amount or reimburse home office expenses outright. Other instances of general cheapness and patronizing shit (e.g., M&A partners annoyed that people aren’t at their desks at 9:30 and now associates now up and down the seniority chain are being called in one by one and told to get to office earlier)

On the staff, first they got rid of assistants for all junior and mid level associates and moved to a shared pod system, which is in line with many firms. But then they replaced almost all of the non-partner assistants with non-DPW temp workers. They usually do shit work and aren’t reliable (prob cuz they get paid like shit with no benefits). Also, those temp assistants now walk around the floors every morning with a clipboard to mark who is in the office. There’s a legitimate reason why they need to do that but its irritating nonetheless. Then they made huge cuts to our word processing department to the point where it can take 1-2 days for simple formatting requests.

Holy shit this sounds terrible. LJL at that poster trying to justify this shit. It also doesn't make too much sense, DPW has strong PPP but I guess maybe there's something else going on?

[Anonymous User]

I don't understand why they are monitoring who is in? Can you not work from home at DPW or is this some kind of weird exercise to make sure how many people need to escape the burning building in an emergency?

The official line is that they need to update the internal directory so teams know who is in office versus working remotely. Bullshit though cuz no one really uses it.

ETA: They used to email us every morning to ask if we’re going to be in office but later moved to clipboard after we all ignored those

DPW Corporate Associate here: the attendance stuff is misleading and blown way out of proportion. The "internal directory" or "411" is used by literally every single person in the firm. Everyone updates it when they get in or go on vacation or are at a meeting, etc. so people know how to get in touch with you. Most people keep a list of all their active matters on there as well as alternative contacts for those matters in case a partner or client needs to reach out to you or someone on the team about it. For attorneys, your assistant updates the 411 for you. When 1-3 yr associates lost their assistants and were assigned to an assistant pool, those associates were asked to update their 411 themselves when they got in the office, went on vacation, working from home, etc. No one did, since we were all used to our assistants doing it for us. Then they tried having the assistant pool email their assigned associates and ask them to update their 411 for the day if they hadn't already. No one responded or did it. So then you had a situation where literally everyone in the firm kept their 411 up to date, except 1-3 yr associates (yes, I know that's a lot of people, but that's besides the point). That's why they now have an assistant from the pool for 1-3 yr associates walk around to see if their assigned associates are in, so they can update your 411. And they don't come exactly at 9:30 - on my floor, the assistant comes around 10, and again around 10:30-11.

Can't speak to M&A partners calling associates in their office to tell them to get in earlier, but I know there are egregious offenders. All of this is not to say that there haven't been cost cutting measures - there definitely have. It was annoying when they got rid of assistants. I'm sure senior associate are pissed they have to share offices (although as mentioned, they are rolling out new internal offices, about ~100 of them, so this should be fixed soon). $25 seamless budget is hardly a real limit - I've gone to $30-35 and haven't had any issues. Black car thing I did get dinged on once when I took it home before 8:30. But that's literally only for the black car service, since it's expensive as fuck and clients won't pay for it. If you've billed all day and take a cab home at 7:30, there's no issue with that.

I disagree with your comment on 411 usage. Yes the partners will have their active matters and status because they have real assistants that will update them. But in my experience very few ppl except the most anal seniors check 411 to see if someone is in the office unless it’s a vacation scenario. On the black car, clients don’t check that kind of shit. Our bills don’t state what time the car was used, only the date. Also, no reason to think our clients are more reluctant to pay those expenses than our peers’ clients. This is more abt optics.

On the dinner point, ofc you can go above it but the limit gives accounting/associate development justification to give you grief about it. And it definitely happens even if not all the time. Rolling out new internal offices is still not a long term fix if our summer classes stay this size unless we suddenly see much more attrition.

On M&A, the hammer also came down on very good associates who came in later because things were slow.

[Anonymous User]

Irell match no bonus

https://abovethelaw.com/2018/06/califor ... ssociates/

[Anonymous User]

I think Weil or Paul Weiss are more likely than V5. Can’t speak to experience at S&C but they’ve run out of ways to cut costs over here at DPW re perks and staff. Zero chance we pay more than we have to

Can you be more precise. Where exactly did DPW cut costs re perks for associates?

You would get a shorter answer if you asked the opposite question.

Where did not DPW cut costs re perks for associates?

Would like to know about this (DPW cutting costs re perks) too, please. Can any DPW folks chime in?

Mid level here, corporate. I wouldn’t really say it’s accurate that perks have been cut back, they just never grew commensurate with our peers. The actual cuts have been in the support staff.

Some examples: our seamless budget is lower than our peers ($25 versus $35). They recently imposed a cap on callback lunches with 2Ls. Our high deductible health insurance deal kinda sucks but more firms are moving that way (but as counter point, S&C gets free health insurance). If we take a black car home at 8:15 instead of 8:30, we get a call from accounting asking why (even if we billed 10 hours+ that day). Our office situation for a lot of corporate groups is horrendous. We have senior associates (including 6th years) who still don’t have their own offices. Slightly different for litigators as there are less of them. They’re currently building internal offices but that will take some time to complete. Our laptops are legit from pre-2012 and the batttry life reflects that. We need to make special requests to enable the tethering on our firm phones for a specific period of time. Our holiday party is in the cafeteria. Many of our other social events are in the conference rooms, I think only the bigger summer events go offsite. We recently just got a tech stipend after associates committee complained for several years, but it still lags behind our peers who give a high dollar amount or reimburse home office expenses outright. Other instances of general cheapness and patronizing shit (e.g., M&A partners annoyed that people aren’t at their desks at 9:30 and now associates now up and down the seniority chain are being called in one by one and told to get to office earlier)

On the staff, first they got rid of assistants for all junior and mid level associates and moved to a shared pod system, which is in line with many firms. But then they replaced almost all of the non-partner assistants with non-DPW temp workers. They usually do shit work and aren’t reliable (prob cuz they get paid like shit with no benefits). Also, those temp assistants now walk around the floors every morning with a clipboard to mark who is in the office. There’s a legitimate reason why they need to do that but its irritating nonetheless. Then they made huge cuts to our word processing department to the point where it can take 1-2 days for simple formatting requests.

Tl;dr We’re not raising salaries unless Cravath makes us

Thanks very much for this detailed answer. I'm currently set to return to DPW after my clerkship (did my summer there last year) and this sort of stuff if very helpful to hear about. Long-term, the office situation, technology/laptop budgets, $25 food limit, and generally the overall relative stinginess really will affect day-to-day life in the Biglaw trenches, so it's worth comparing and contrasting across peer firms carefully. Frankly, DPW should be embarrassed!

[Anonymous User]

honestly why would you need a system to see if im in the office? you could just call me or send me an email. there's no way our partners would ever even know how to check such a system if we had one.

[Anonymous User]

honestly why would you need a system to see if im in the office? you could just call me or send me an email. there's no way our partners would ever even know how to check such a system if we had one.

Why would anyone give a F if you're in the office unless you have a meeting? We have remote access and no longer use the Pony Express. This is why 75 year old+ partners need to retire - they're dead weight.