2020 End of Year Bonuses Forum

[Anonymous User]

Is Alston & Bird now the top firm not to give any COVID bonuses, displacing Sheppard Mullin?

As a DLA anon I’m insulted by this post.

[Anonymous User]

Is Alston & Bird now the top firm not to give any COVID bonuses, displacing Sheppard Mullin?

As a DLA anon I’m insulted by this post.

At least now you know who your “peer” firms are. As a Cadwalader anon, I’m expecting to join that group shortly. I don’t even think CWT will do make whole payments. Lots of people looking to jump ship at CWT.

[Anonymous User]

Is Alston & Bird now the top firm not to give any COVID bonuses, displacing Sheppard Mullin?

Don’t forget the cheapskates at Arnold & Porter, who can no longer fall back on the DC firm garbage excuse now that Cov opened up the wallet.

—Signed, A&P associate billing away the holiday season

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

At least now you know who your “peer” firms are. As a Cadwalader anon, I’m expecting to join that group shortly. I don’t even think CWT will do make whole payments. Lots of people looking to jump ship at CWT.

A firm with $3M PPP last year being *doubly* short of market (since I presume a firm that doesn't make whole a four-month 25% cut is also not paying special bonus) is wild. Look at the PPPs of the some of the firms who pay market--unless they had the biggest profit drop I've ever seen, associates should be telling management they'll be doing nothing more for them besides catapulting them into the sun.

[nahumya]

Is Alston & Bird now the top firm not to give any COVID bonuses, displacing Sheppard Mullin?

LOL, no. While I can't speak for every office as bonuses are individualized, Greenberg Traurig hasn't even announced bonuses let alone given the inevitable (individualized) announcements that it is not paying COVID bonuses, and in many cases also paying far less than market bonuses. GT is higher on every list (Vault, Am Law, etc.) and by every metric (number of attorneys, PPEP, revenue) than Alston. GT is a joke, and why they don't get more negative press is beyond me given how well the firm does year after year.

Actually, A&B has higher PPP and RPL.

[Anonymous User]

I'm trying to get a sense of the biggest firms (say, Vault 100 as an arbitrary cut-off) that aren't paying special bonuses. Based on a scan of this ATL article, in alphabetical order it's:

Alston & Bird
Arnold & Porter
Baker McKenzie
DLA Piper (not in the article, but confirmed in thread)
Perkins Coie
Sheppard Mullin

The article says "No" for a couple firms that beat the market + special with their individualized bonuses anyway (Susman, Selendy) so they are not included on the Cheapskate and/or Poor Firm Health list above.

Who else? While the Greenberg Traurigs of the world will make the list eventually, I'm more interested in places that have had bonus announcements and made clear they aren't paying up.

[Anonymous User]

I'm trying to get a sense of the biggest firms (say, Vault 100 as an arbitrary cut-off) that aren't paying special bonuses. Based on a scan of this ATL article, in alphabetical order it's:

Alston & Bird
Arnold & Porter
Baker McKenzie
DLA Piper (not in the article, but confirmed in thread)
Perkins Coie
Sheppard Mullin

The article says "No" for a couple firms that beat the market + special with their individualized bonuses anyway (Susman, Selendy) so they are not included on the Cheapskate and/or Poor Firm Health list above.

Who else? While the Greenberg Traurigs of the world will make the list eventually, I'm more interested in places that have had bonus announcements and made clear they aren't paying up.

Baker Botts sent individualized bonus memos last week. I had 2050+ hours and got market end-of-year bonus + true up, but no special bonus.

[Anonymous User]

King & Spalding sent out individualized memos. Here is a quote regarding bonuses:
"The firm evaluates the bonus programs annually to ensure market competitiveness, taking into account public information throughout the year. Consistent with prior years, we will finalize our bonus programs in early 2021, and 2020 bonuses will be paid before the end of the first quarter of 2021 to eligible lawyers who are employed at the firm at the time of payment."

[Anonymous User]

Who else in the V30-V100 range is still waiting to hear about bonuses (of any kind)? At a firm that normally announces in early December, but complete crickets...wondering if anyone else is in the same or similar boat.

[Anonymous User]

Who else in the V30-V100 range is still waiting to hear about bonuses (of any kind)? At a firm that normally announces in early December, but complete crickets...wondering if anyone else is in the same or similar boat.

WH, but they always announce in January

[Anonymous User]

Baker Botts sent individualized bonus memos last week. I had 2050+ hours and got market end-of-year bonus + true up, but no special bonus.

Is BB doing well this year? Are they hurting from the energy downturn?

[Anonymous User]

Who else in the V30-V100 range is still waiting to hear about bonuses (of any kind)? At a firm that normally announces in early December, but complete crickets...wondering if anyone else is in the same or similar boat.

WH, but they always announce in January

WilmerHale?

[Anonymous User]

Baker Botts sent individualized bonus memos last week. I had 2050+ hours and got market end-of-year bonus + true up, but no special bonus.

Is BB doing well this year? Are they hurting from the energy downturn?

True-up looks especially positive given the energy situation. Haven't seen anything on V&E yet for comparison or even the more local Houston firms.

[Anonymous User]

Baker Botts sent individualized bonus memos last week. I had 2050+ hours and got market end-of-year bonus + true up, but no special bonus.

Different BB anon -- I was also over 2000 hours (but below 2050) and got market end-of-year and true-up but not COVID bonus. This is particularly frustrating because they have historically always paid market at 2000 hours and I think it's clear that "market" comp this year included the COVID bonus. And I had over 1800 billable hours so it wasn't a situation where I was going overboard on pro bono or something like that.

[Anonymous User]

Heard on good authority that DLA is at least seriously considering walking back their earlier stated refusal to match “special” bonuses, but that a final decision re amount would not be made until early 2021.

Seems the associate griping described earlier ITT may have done the trick...

Anon on purpose and please don’t ask me details re how/where I heard.

[Anonymous User]

Heard on good authority that DLA is at least seriously considering walking back their earlier stated refusal to match “special” bonuses, but that a final decision re amount would not be made until early 2021.

Seems the associate griping described earlier ITT may have done the trick...

Anon on purpose and please don’t ask me details re how/where I heard.

(DLA anon) They sent a very vague email saying they may pay more than what was previously communicated. Totally noncommittal and could easily mean simple bumps for merit/hours - which would normally not be near the extra amount in the special bonuses.

But I guess we’ll see. Would be great if they did match!

[Anonymous User]

Heard on good authority that DLA is at least seriously considering walking back their earlier stated refusal to match “special” bonuses, but that a final decision re amount would not be made until early 2021.

Seems the associate griping described earlier ITT may have done the trick...

Anon on purpose and please don’t ask me details re how/where I heard.

(DLA anon) They sent a very vague email saying they may pay more than what was previously communicated. Totally noncommittal and could easily mean simple bumps for merit/hours - which would normally not be near the extra amount in the special bonuses.

But I guess we’ll see. Would be great if they did match!

Another DLA anon. It's totally non-committal. It's like well we'll see looking at firm finances by end of year if we bump pay. Idk but to me, reading between the lines, it makes me think they're positioning to say no arguing that blah blah firm wants to conservatively position itself for future variance and that while we appreciate everyone's hard work, we don't want to pay out. I mean, they should already know what firm's finances are by this point.

There's really no leverage that associates have other than to leave at this point. No amount of bitching through our Associate Committee is going to push management to do jack. This sucks.

[Anonymous User]

What a strange system we have agreed to, where about a quarter of our annual compensation comes from a single check at the end of the year that's entirely left to the discretion of ownership.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if Cravath partners all agreed secretly at some lunch meeting to dissolve their firm and then announced in December zero bonuses for everyone, just before the partners sold the desks, broke the lease, and cashed out before taking their clients to other firms. There would be no recourse at all for associates.

[parkslope]

What a strange system we have agreed to, where about a quarter of our annual compensation comes from a single check at the end of the year that's entirely left to the discretion of ownership.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if Cravath partners all agreed secretly at some lunch meeting to dissolve their firm and then announced in December zero bonuses for everyone, just before the partners sold the desks, broke the lease, and cashed out before taking their clients to other firms. There would be no recourse at all for associates.

In finance the "bonus" part of compensation is even higher than in biglaw, often 80% or more of total compensation for more senior people. The strangest part of our system is that four or five New York firms set the salaries and bonuses for dozens of other firms spread out across the country.

The second-strangest part is that compensation is not related to billable hours despite that being how firms make money. The associate billing 2500 and the associate billing 1800 make the same amount of money. This is not the case in any other industry.

[Anonymous User]

Bumping to say that Baker matched special bonuses according to ATL.

Now DLA really has no excuse. They have to match ... I think.

[12YrsAnAssociate]

Bumping to say that Baker matched special bonuses according to ATL.

Now DLA really has no excuse. They have to match ... I think.

Right. The firms that haven't paid special bonuses are dog shit. People should remember who pays and who doesn't.

[Anonymous User]

Bumping to say that Baker matched special bonuses according to ATL.

Now DLA really has no excuse. They have to match ... I think.

Right. The firms that haven't paid special bonuses are dog shit. People should remember who pays and who doesn't.

DLA’s calendar is pretty far back for everything hours and bonus related, I believe. I think they’ll pay, but it was extremely short sighted of whomever makes these decisions not to just be cool from the beginning. Now they’ll likely take the financial hit from paying up after they’ve already suffered the publicity hit by being one of these firms saying they won’t pay up per ATL.

[Anonymous User]

Cadwalader not paying special bonus.

[dyemond]

What a strange system we have agreed to, where about a quarter of our annual compensation comes from a single check at the end of the year that's entirely left to the discretion of ownership.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if Cravath partners all agreed secretly at some lunch meeting to dissolve their firm and then announced in December zero bonuses for everyone, just before the partners sold the desks, broke the lease, and cashed out before taking their clients to other firms. There would be no recourse at all for associates.

In finance the "bonus" part of compensation is even higher than in biglaw, often 80% or more of total compensation for more senior people. The strangest part of our system is that four or five New York firms set the salaries and bonuses for dozens of other firms spread out across the country.

The second-strangest part is that compensation is not related to billable hours despite that being how firms make money. The associate billing 2500 and the associate billing 1800 make the same amount of money. This is not the case in any other industry.

If you pay associates different amounts for their bonuses based on production, this leads to a conversation about doing the same for partners. Industry is leading away from lockstep compensation but there are still many advocates for lockstep compensation and the alleged benefits it brings.

[Anonymous User]

Cadwalader not paying special bonus.

I do not get Cadwalader. Apparently they've got some name prestige among clients but everything I've heard about them from TLS, re: their NYC office (Charlotte not so much) is that it's a toxic shithole that apparently also underpays their associates. Not sure why it has such catchet among people.