2021 Special Bonuses Forum

[Joachim2017]

What's the deal with Wachtell? The place is like North Korea; no one who works there seem to say a single word, good or bad - whether about COVID bonuses, spring bonuses or whatever. Place is just a billing machine that never hits the gossip train.

Does anyone know the actual bonus rate at Wachtell? There was some talk that they once paid 100% bonuses, but that it has been reduced in recent years. If a place like Kirkland pays spring/fall special bonus and a high year-end bonus multiple, is the pay at Wachtell really that much better that no one would dare question its compensation model?

They are laughing at us for being excited about this tiny amount of special bonus...

Yup, this has been correct for literally years now. WLRK has been paying regular bonuses of at *at least* 100% of base salary for some time now; in some recent years it's been north of 100%. And yes, it is better than Kirkland, GDC, Quinn, whatever else non-market, hours-based comp model you can think of. A bunch of us did the math a few years back and even Kellogg Hansen's $175k clerkship bonus, together with salary, does not compete with WLRK's as soon as you enter complete 2 years at the firm. The only places that beat it are super-small contingency-based highly-flux litigation firms (think of Dovel & Luner, eg), and maybe, in some years, Susman.

Yeah and i get laughed at by my banking friends who's getting 100-150% of base as their bonus, which goes to 200-300K (they are 3rd year IBD associates now and yes it is only for their bonuses, on top of their base salary of another 200K)

Now here I am working at so called V5 law firm in nyc being excited about 30K special bonus that my firm graciously decided to award. I should've gone to banking...

Well I won't speak for you, specifically, because I have no idea who you are, but this is not some generally applicable truth about associates at V5 Big Law or elite boutique. They don't actually have the skills necessary to do the work your friends in IB can do. So it's not a simple "I chose path X, shoulda just chosen path Y." It's a stereotype, but generally true, that lawyers aren't able to hack it when that kind of technical analysis is needed in order to have been able to choose path Y in the first place.

(Even if much of the day-to-day work is involves plug-and-chug Excel charts and PP decks, the various tests and skills you need to demonstrate to get the IB jobs are not ones easily fungible with the skills needed to get into Big Law (let's be honest, it's really not that hard). If they could, corp associates would not have gone to law school and then corporate/transactional law. That is, generally, the refuge of those people in the Venn diagram who (a) aren't interested in actual law and (b) aren't good enough technically for the substantive IB/VC/etc jobs underlying Big Law's work product on the transaction side.)

[Anonymous User]

What's the deal with Wachtell? The place is like North Korea; no one who works there seem to say a single word, good or bad - whether about COVID bonuses, spring bonuses or whatever. Place is just a billing machine that never hits the gossip train.

Does anyone know the actual bonus rate at Wachtell? There was some talk that they once paid 100% bonuses, but that it has been reduced in recent years. If a place like Kirkland pays spring/fall special bonus and a high year-end bonus multiple, is the pay at Wachtell really that much better that no one would dare question its compensation model?

They are laughing at us for being excited about this tiny amount of special bonus...

Yup, this has been correct for literally years now. WLRK has been paying regular bonuses of at *at least* 100% of base salary for some time now; in some recent years it's been north of 100%. And yes, it is better than Kirkland, GDC, Quinn, whatever else non-market, hours-based comp model you can think of. A bunch of us did the math a few years back and even Kellogg Hansen's $175k clerkship bonus, together with salary, does not compete with WLRK's as soon as you enter complete 2 years at the firm. The only places that beat it are super-small contingency-based highly-flux litigation firms (think of Dovel & Luner, eg), and maybe, in some years, Susman.

Yeah and i get laughed at by my banking friends who's getting 100-150% of base as their bonus, which goes to 200-300K (they are 3rd year IBD associates now and yes it is only for their bonuses, on top of their base salary of another 200K)

Now here I am working at so called V5 law firm in nyc being excited about 30K special bonus that my firm graciously decided to award. I should've gone to banking...

Well I won't speak for you, specifically, because I have no idea who you are, but this is not some generally applicable truth about associates at V5 Big Law or elite boutique. They don't actually have the skills necessary to do the work your friends in IB can do. So it's not a simple "I chose path X, shoulda just chosen path Y." It's a stereotype, but generally true, that lawyers aren't able to hack it when that kind of technical analysis is needed in order to have been able to choose path Y in the first place.

(Even if much of the day-to-day work is involves plug-and-chug Excel charts and PP decks, the various tests and skills you need to demonstrate to get the IB jobs are not ones easily fungible with the skills needed to get into Big Law (let's be honest, it's really not that hard). If they could, corp associates would not have gone to law school and then corporate/transactional law. That is, generally, the refuge of those people in the Venn diagram who (a) aren't interested in actual law and (b) aren't good enough technically for the substantive IB/VC/etc jobs underlying Big Law's work product on the transaction side.)

The reverse of this is true as well. Plenty of bankers would not have gotten a high enough LSAT score for a top school, and then good enough grades at that school, to make it into biglaw. I generally agree that once you get the job, the work isn’t that “hard” (there is just an enormous amount of it), but I think this aspect is actually pretty similar between banking and biglaw for juniors at each.

[Anonymous User]

What's the deal with Wachtell? The place is like North Korea; no one who works there seem to say a single word, good or bad - whether about COVID bonuses, spring bonuses or whatever. Place is just a billing machine that never hits the gossip train.

Does anyone know the actual bonus rate at Wachtell? There was some talk that they once paid 100% bonuses, but that it has been reduced in recent years. If a place like Kirkland pays spring/fall special bonus and a high year-end bonus multiple, is the pay at Wachtell really that much better that no one would dare question its compensation model?

They are laughing at us for being excited about this tiny amount of special bonus...

Yup, this has been correct for literally years now. WLRK has been paying regular bonuses of at *at least* 100% of base salary for some time now; in some recent years it's been north of 100%. And yes, it is better than Kirkland, GDC, Quinn, whatever else non-market, hours-based comp model you can think of. A bunch of us did the math a few years back and even Kellogg Hansen's $175k clerkship bonus, together with salary, does not compete with WLRK's as soon as you enter complete 2 years at the firm. The only places that beat it are super-small contingency-based highly-flux litigation firms (think of Dovel & Luner, eg), and maybe, in some years, Susman.

Yeah and i get laughed at by my banking friends who's getting 100-150% of base as their bonus, which goes to 200-300K (they are 3rd year IBD associates now and yes it is only for their bonuses, on top of their base salary of another 200K)

Now here I am working at so called V5 law firm in nyc being excited about 30K special bonus that my firm graciously decided to award. I should've gone to banking...

Well I won't speak for you, specifically, because I have no idea who you are, but this is not some generally applicable truth about associates at V5 Big Law or elite boutique. They don't actually have the skills necessary to do the work your friends in IB can do. So it's not a simple "I chose path X, shoulda just chosen path Y." It's a stereotype, but generally true, that lawyers aren't able to hack it when that kind of technical analysis is needed in order to have been able to choose path Y in the first place.

(Even if much of the day-to-day work is involves plug-and-chug Excel charts and PP decks, the various tests and skills you need to demonstrate to get the IB jobs are not ones easily fungible with the skills needed to get into Big Law (let's be honest, it's really not that hard). If they could, corp associates would not have gone to law school and then corporate/transactional law. That is, generally, the refuge of those people in the Venn diagram who (a) aren't interested in actual law and (b) aren't good enough technically for the substantive IB/VC/etc jobs underlying Big Law's work product on the transaction side.)

I dont think this is generally true. At least at my CCN, we have several classmates in my section who used to be IB analysts at bulge bracket but is now on the law school -> biglaw train; several of our faculties also used to be investment banker but went into the corporate lawyer route and eventually -> academia. I dont know about VC/PE, but at least for IB recruiting: many of my classmates would meet the threshold - target school + econ/finance/stem major + solid internships in undergrad + good grades and social skills. Elite undergrad with econ major is pretty common qualification package in law school, and if that's true at a T6, I would bet it'd be even more common at HYS. Some people chose to go to law school bc they are interested in the law, but subsequently realized law is not for them, so corporate law is the exit for them. many JD/MBAs also have the option to go IB, but some chose to go biglaw anyways. Saying Biglaw associates are generally not intellectually capable of handling IBankers works is not true, imo.

[Anonymous User]

Well I won't speak for you, specifically, because I have no idea who you are, but this is not some generally applicable truth about associates at V5 Big Law or elite boutique. They don't actually have the skills necessary to do the work your friends in IB can do. So it's not a simple "I chose path X, shoulda just chosen path Y." It's a stereotype, but generally true, that lawyers aren't able to hack it when that kind of technical analysis is needed in order to have been able to choose path Y in the first place.

(Even if much of the day-to-day work is involves plug-and-chug Excel charts and PP decks, the various tests and skills you need to demonstrate to get the IB jobs are not ones easily fungible with the skills needed to get into Big Law (let's be honest, it's really not that hard). If they could, corp associates would not have gone to law school and then corporate/transactional law. That is, generally, the refuge of those people in the Venn diagram who (a) aren't interested in actual law and (b) aren't good enough technically for the substantive IB/VC/etc jobs underlying Big Law's work product on the transaction side.)

Not to pile on, since there's already been some pushback on this, but: I spent a couple years in IB prior to law school and have to disagree. The skillsets actually are "fungible" since biglaw and IB both select for moderately smart people with the work-ethic to grind out long hours and do as they're told.

The life of a junior banker is 80% clerical work like making pitchbooks (often just translating into PowerPoint what a VP/MD has already sketched out on paper), tracking which parties have signed NDAs, uploading files into a dataroom, and taking notes on calls. The other 20% is making very formulaic WACC and DCF calculations in Excel — corporate finance 101 stuff that anybody with an LSAT over (say) 165 is capable of learning, if they tried.

It goes without saying that most or all "associates at V5 Big Law" are in that >165 bucket, i.e., have the intellectual horsepower and work-ethic to handle IB.

At the more senior levels of IB (VP/MD), the skillset evolves and is much more about client development, relationship building, etc. But that's true of biglaw partners as well, the skillsets sort of move in tandem.

[Anonymous User]

Well I won't speak for you, specifically, because I have no idea who you are, but this is not some generally applicable truth about associates at V5 Big Law or elite boutique. They don't actually have the skills necessary to do the work your friends in IB can do. So it's not a simple "I chose path X, shoulda just chosen path Y." It's a stereotype, but generally true, that lawyers aren't able to hack it when that kind of technical analysis is needed in order to have been able to choose path Y in the first place.

(Even if much of the day-to-day work is involves plug-and-chug Excel charts and PP decks, the various tests and skills you need to demonstrate to get the IB jobs are not ones easily fungible with the skills needed to get into Big Law (let's be honest, it's really not that hard). If they could, corp associates would not have gone to law school and then corporate/transactional law. That is, generally, the refuge of those people in the Venn diagram who (a) aren't interested in actual law and (b) aren't good enough technically for the substantive IB/VC/etc jobs underlying Big Law's work product on the transaction side.)

Not to pile on, since there's already been some pushback on this, but: I spent a couple years in IB prior to law school and have to disagree. The skillsets actually are "fungible" since biglaw and IB both select for moderately smart people with the work-ethic to grind out long hours and do as they're told.

The life of a junior banker is 80% clerical work like making pitchbooks (often just translating into PowerPoint what a VP/MD has already sketched out on paper), tracking which parties have signed NDAs, uploading files into a dataroom, and taking notes on calls. The other 20% is making very formulaic WACC and DCF calculations in Excel — corporate finance 101 stuff that anybody with an LSAT over (say) 165 is capable of learning, if they tried.

It goes without saying that most or all "associates at V5 Big Law" are in that >165 bucket, i.e., have the intellectual horsepower and work-ethic to handle IB.

At the more senior levels of IB (VP/MD), the skillset evolves and is much more about client development, relationship building, etc. But that's true of biglaw partners as well, the skillsets sort of move in tandem.

I too was IBD analyst at a top BB and this is 100% true. I personally do not like @Joachim2017 comment as it reflects some BL lawyers' feeling inferior to banking about their work. But at the same time, it makes me sad because it is true that many law school students without real work experience feel this way. I think this contributes to undermining the biglaw profession in some ways. In this sense, I hope biglaw salary to be more based meritocracy and salary gap between (more limited) top firms and the rest of biglaw. But I guess there's not much motivation for the top law firms to do this.

I'm at V3 and I've noticed that larger portion of lawyers who are outside of say V5-10 especially in nyc think like Joachim2017. It sort of makes sense because # of people going into banking is comparable to the size of their incoming class size. I dont hate my job but i certainly dont enjoy the general BL lawyers' sentiment like this.

[Anonymous User]

What's the deal with Wachtell? The place is like North Korea; no one who works there seem to say a single word, good or bad - whether about COVID bonuses, spring bonuses or whatever. Place is just a billing machine that never hits the gossip train.

Does anyone know the actual bonus rate at Wachtell? There was some talk that they once paid 100% bonuses, but that it has been reduced in recent years. If a place like Kirkland pays spring/fall special bonus and a high year-end bonus multiple, is the pay at Wachtell really that much better that no one would dare question its compensation model?

They are laughing at us for being excited about this tiny amount of special bonus...

Yup, this has been correct for literally years now. WLRK has been paying regular bonuses of at *at least* 100% of base salary for some time now; in some recent years it's been north of 100%. And yes, it is better than Kirkland, GDC, Quinn, whatever else non-market, hours-based comp model you can think of. A bunch of us did the math a few years back and even Kellogg Hansen's $175k clerkship bonus, together with salary, does not compete with WLRK's as soon as you enter complete 2 years at the firm. The only places that beat it are super-small contingency-based highly-flux litigation firms (think of Dovel & Luner, eg), and maybe, in some years, Susman.

Yeah and i get laughed at by my banking friends who's getting 100-150% of base as their bonus, which goes to 200-300K (they are 3rd year IBD associates now and yes it is only for their bonuses, on top of their base salary of another 200K)

Now here I am working at so called V5 law firm in nyc being excited about 30K special bonus that my firm graciously decided to award. I should've gone to banking...

Well I won't speak for you, specifically, because I have no idea who you are, but this is not some generally applicable truth about associates at V5 Big Law or elite boutique. They don't actually have the skills necessary to do the work your friends in IB can do. So it's not a simple "I chose path X, shoulda just chosen path Y." It's a stereotype, but generally true, that lawyers aren't able to hack it when that kind of technical analysis is needed in order to have been able to choose path Y in the first place.

(Even if much of the day-to-day work is involves plug-and-chug Excel charts and PP decks, the various tests and skills you need to demonstrate to get the IB jobs are not ones easily fungible with the skills needed to get into Big Law (let's be honest, it's really not that hard). If they could, corp associates would not have gone to law school and then corporate/transactional law. That is, generally, the refuge of those people in the Venn diagram who (a) aren't interested in actual law and (b) aren't good enough technically for the substantive IB/VC/etc jobs underlying Big Law's work product on the transaction side.)

I'm the original anon you replied to. I dont know about your colleagues in your league but this is certainly not "generally" true in V5. Of course, litigators or people with pure liberal arts background might not have been interested in finance just because they are not, but there are many BL associates who used to work in banking or at least did some internships at top banks. I also did work as banking analyst at a top bank for a year.

On a side note, I feel like there are too many biglaw firms with the same pay scale on the street imo. I wish top biglaw firms separate themselves from the rest, but it made me thinking the type of legal service we provide is not that differentiatable after all..

[Anonymous User]

Regarding compensation in IB v. Biglaw, it appears to be factually just untrue that the average associate in IB is out-earning their BL counterparts. SOME will, of course (generally at the very top of their class or group) but based on WSO data, most are making UNDER.

https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/investm ... ry-reports

[Anonymous User]

Regarding compensation in IB v. Biglaw, it appears to be factually just untrue that the average associate in IB is out-earning their BL counterparts. SOME will, of course (generally at the very top of their class or group) but based on WSO data, most are making UNDER.

https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/investm ... ry-reports

Dude... I guess you know nothing about IB comp. Associates base is 150(AS1)/175(AS2)/200K(AS3) (But BofA raised Associates and VPs base by 25K making it 175/200/225K, (other BBs will follow) and their bonus is 80%~120% of their base - first year associate likely get lower bonus perc (80%) and third year likely gets higher (e.g. 150%). Therefore, street average for AS1/AS2/AS3 would be 270/350/440 (assuming 80%/100%/120% bonus).

Regarding that reports from WSO, the fact that their base is close to 150K means that many are 1st year and it means their bonus for stub year is factored in. So just like the first year associates in biglaw, IB first year associate is for 1.5 year and they get prorated bonus for 3~6 months of working based on shitty 40~50% of the 150K bonus (which is still larger than BL tho). So if you're an "AVERAGE" performer in your 3rd year, you make 440K in banking while you'd make 290K in biglaw and the fun part is that this 150K gap gets wider as your career progresses. What this means to me is that biglaw is great for UNDERPERFORMER, the bottom 50% or people outside V10, but it's not an ideal place for the ones who want to work hard.

I'm not saying banking is better than BL (coming from banking, I think BL is actually better in some ways) but just wanted to correct the salary info what you claim to be "factually" correct.

[Anonymous User]

double post

[pelagius558]

Regarding compensation in IB v. Biglaw, it appears to be factually just untrue that the average associate in IB is out-earning their BL counterparts. SOME will, of course (generally at the very top of their class or group) but based on WSO data, most are making UNDER.

https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/investm ... ry-reports

Dude... I guess you know nothing about IB comp. Associates base is 150(AS1)/175(AS2)/200K(AS3) (But BofA raised Associates and VPs base by 25K making it 175/200/225K, (other BBs will follow) and their bonus is 80%~120% of their base - first year associate likely get lower bonus perc (80%) and third year likely gets higher (e.g. 150%). Therefore, street average for AS1/AS2/AS3 would be 270/350/440 (assuming 80%/100%/120% bonus).

Regarding that reports from WSO, the fact that their base is close to 150K means that many are 1st year and it means their bonus for stub year is factored in. So just like the first year associates in biglaw, IB first year associate is for 1.5 year and they get prorated bonus for 3~6 months of working based on shitty 40~50% of the 150K bonus (which is still larger than BL tho). So if you're an "AVERAGE" performer in your 3rd year, you make 440K in banking while you'd make 290K in biglaw and the fun part is that this 150K gap gets wider as your career progresses. What this means to me is that biglaw is great for UNDERPERFORMER, the bottom 50% or people outside V10, but it's not an ideal place for the ones who want to work hard.

I'm not saying banking is better than BL (coming from banking, I think BL is actually better in some ways) but just wanted to correct the salary info what you claim to be "factually" correct.

The average total comp for IB associates in 2019, 2020 and 2021 is listed as being 234000, while the average for VPs is listed as being 500k, and this is from data self-reported, presumably, by actual IB associates. Are you asserting that the average third year associate makes only 60k less than the average VP?

It seems the WSO chart is the only systematic report on IB pay we have, unless we are going to rely on anecdotal data. But if you have a better source, please point to it.

[Anonymous User]

Regarding compensation in IB v. Biglaw, it appears to be factually just untrue that the average associate in IB is out-earning their BL counterparts. SOME will, of course (generally at the very top of their class or group) but based on WSO data, most are making UNDER.

https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/investm ... ry-reports

Dude... I guess you know nothing about IB comp. Associates base is 150(AS1)/175(AS2)/200K(AS3) (But BofA raised Associates and VPs base by 25K making it 175/200/225K, (other BBs will follow) and their bonus is 80%~120% of their base - first year associate likely get lower bonus perc (80%) and third year likely gets higher (e.g. 150%). Therefore, street average for AS1/AS2/AS3 would be 270/350/440 (assuming 80%/100%/120% bonus).

Regarding that reports from WSO, the fact that their base is close to 150K means that many are 1st year and it means their bonus for stub year is factored in. So just like the first year associates in biglaw, IB first year associate is for 1.5 year and they get prorated bonus for 3~6 months of working based on shitty 40~50% of the 150K bonus (which is still larger than BL tho). So if you're an "AVERAGE" performer in your 3rd year, you make 440K in banking while you'd make 290K in biglaw and the fun part is that this 150K gap gets wider as your career progresses. What this means to me is that biglaw is great for UNDERPERFORMER, the bottom 50% or people outside V10, but it's not an ideal place for the ones who want to work hard.

I'm not saying banking is better than BL (coming from banking, I think BL is actually better in some ways) but just wanted to correct the salary info what you claim to be "factually" correct.

The average total comp for IB associates in 2019, 2020 and 2021 is listed as being 234000, while the average for VPs is listed as being 500k, and this is from data self-reported, presumably, by actual IB associates. Are you asserting that the average third year associate makes only 60k less than the average VP?

It seems the WSO chart is the only systematic report on IB pay we have, unless we are going to rely on anecdotal data. But if you have a better source, please point to it.

I'm not sure why you're arguing over this even though I said I'm from banking but anyway here's my answer.

I gotta say, you knew where to find but your interpretation is wrong. You don't want to take the number as is given.

Banking pay (at least for IBD not some markets people where sales and traders work) is pretty much close to biglaw in the sense that their base is public info. For major banks (BB banks like Goldman, MS, JPM, Citi, CS, DB, UBS, BAML and EB banks like PJT, Moelis, Lazard, Evercore, HL, PWP) salary for junior bankers (analysts + associates) and VP level are almost in the same range. Especially for base salary, it's identically set at 150/175/200K for associates and 225/250/275K for VPs (some EB pays higher base by 25K or so for each level). And for bonuses, as I said above, it's pretty much in the range of 80~120% for average associates and 100~200% range for VPs. Yes, as you may have just noticed, VP's bonus % range is wider, so it is possible that some underperforming VPs make less than some 3rd year associates, even in the same bank.

If you look at the WSO data, for VPs, BAML has 166K and JPM has 134K with sample size of 2~3 only. This is just not correct data. It's either put in by mistake or joke. (or maybe some backoffice people who works in admin/tech/risk mgmt put their numbers arguing they also work in banking) Everyone on the street knows that. Basically any number in the VP column that has base number of less than 200K is not correct. It's just not.

Additionally, WSO is for banking analysts wannabes or current analyst-level bankers. I assume at least more than 80% is in or below analyst level and more than 95% are junior bankers (including associates). That should explain why the sample size for all VP is only +30. It's just not a reliable source for comps of non-analyst level bankers.

[mwells_56]

Getting back on topic, 3L here who doesn't know what special bonuses are? Can someone explain this topic?

[Anonymous User]

Just curious, from a historical perspective, has biglaw compensation always been as uniform as it is today? Like in the 1970s, '80s, '90s, was there more of a pay gap between the elite NY firms (e.g. Cravath et al.) and the mid tier?

People on TLS sometimes speculate about more stratification coming — as in, V20ish / super-high PEP firms breaking away en masse from the rest of the market. But then something like special bonuses will happen and a fairly wide chunk of the V100 will match DPW.

[Anonymous User]

Are boutique firms expected to give similar special bonuses? Places like Molo, Kaplan, Wilkinson, etc

[Anonymous User]

Getting back on topic, 3L here who doesn't know what special bonuses are? Can someone explain this topic?

Most firms give a bonus at the end of the year. Those are the anual bonuses, and there is an expectation that while the amount might change, there will be an extra payment of some kind every year. Occasionally, the market movers will decide to give out bonuses at other times of the year, often as a stop gap to prevent salary increases (so you will see them more often at the end of a salary cycle than the begining). Those are special bonuses, because there is no expectation they will be paid more than once.

The special bonuses we are talking about here are a specific rubric of bonuses the firms are adopting this year, paying half in the spring and half in the fall, on a scale of $12K to $64K total depending on class year (older class years getting paid more). They've been branded either "COVID Bonuses" or "Spring Bonuses," but whatever you call them there is no expectation they will be paid next year, so they are "special."

Hope that helps.

[malibustacy]

Getting back on topic, 3L here who doesn't know what special bonuses are? Can someone explain this topic?

Not even to be rude, but the most simple Google search would answer this question.

[Anonymous User]

Getting back on topic, 3L here who doesn't know what special bonuses are? Can someone explain this topic?

Not even to be rude, but the most simple Google search would answer this question.

Yeah I was kind of able to figure out it was somehow related to COVID but it was unclear to me if it was going to be recurring, how it was related to COVID, what it means for payscale moving forward, etc. Should've specified my question more.

edit accidental anon, i'm OP

[mwells_56]

Getting back on topic, 3L here who doesn't know what special bonuses are? Can someone explain this topic?

Most firms give a bonus at the end of the year. Those are the anual bonuses, and there is an expectation that while the amount might change, there will be an extra payment of some kind every year. Occasionally, the market movers will decide to give out bonuses at other times of the year, often as a stop gap to prevent salary increases (so you will see them more often at the end of a salary cycle than the begining). Those are special bonuses, because there is no expectation they will be paid more than once.

The special bonuses we are talking about here are a specific rubric of bonuses the firms are adopting this year, paying half in the spring and half in the fall, on a scale of $12K to $64K total depending on class year (older class years getting paid more). They've been branded either "COVID Bonuses" or "Spring Bonuses," but whatever you call them there is no expectation they will be paid next year, so they are "special."

Hope that helps.

Gracias

[Anonymous User]

Are boutique firms expected to give similar special bonuses? Places like Molo, Kaplan, Wilkinson, etc

+1 anyone know?

[Anonymous User]

Are bonuses prorated for first years who started later than in normal years? My V30 started us in January and is prorating the bonuses (so rather than $12k we're getting closer to $9k total)

[Anonymous User]

Are bonuses prorated for first years who started later than in normal years? My V30 started us in January and is prorating the bonuses (so rather than $12k we're getting closer to $9k total)

Yes, bonuses are often prorated for first years and transfers, though not always.

[TheoO]

The tried and true principal that the longer a TLS thread goes the higher the chance it will ultimately degrade into "I should have done IB" and/or "IB is overrated"

[Anonymous User]

Any word from Susman/Kellogg?

[cavalier1138]

Any word from Susman/Kellogg?

I think it was mentioned previously in the thread, but firms like Susman already don't follow the market for bonuses.

[Anonymous User]

Any word from Susman/Kellogg?

I think it was mentioned previously in the thread, but firms like Susman already don't follow the market for bonuses.

Right, but does that mean they don't give these bonuses?