Big Law Bonus - Do most people get it? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Is it their way of avoiding paying bonuses to everyone? Like you would obviously get a bonus for billing over 2,400 so if they stack you with more work their cost remains the same rather than spreading the work and triggering bonus payments to others?

No, people end up doing way above 2k because they do good work so keep getting more (or in some groups there are way too few bodies). It’s not a conscious cost saving measure but it’s not lost on management that it’s cheaper to pay a 1.2x bonus to someone at 2300 and no bonus to 1700 than to pay two regular bonuses to 2k each

[Anonymous User]

Is it their way of avoiding paying bonuses to everyone? Like you would obviously get a bonus for billing over 2,400 so if they stack you with more work their cost remains the same rather than spreading the work and triggering bonus payments to others?

No, people end up doing way above 2k because they do good work so keep getting more (or in some groups there are way too few bodies). It’s not a conscious cost saving measure but it’s not lost on management that it’s cheaper to pay a 1.2x bonus to someone at 2300 and no bonus to 1700 than to pay two regular bonuses to 2k each

Even this answer is assuming at the end someone actually looks at your annualized hours when deciding to give you work. I’m at a free market firm, so I don’t know how it works for others. But here, I guarantee no one does that (at least I don’t). We staff based on liking the persons work, and that person saying they are available. There is no scheming mastermind trying to avoid paying bonuses, unless you count the invisible hand of the markets.

[unlicensedpotato]

IME most partners would prefer that as many associates in their department get bonuses as possible. It helps make their associates happy and the majority of the cost of the bonus is borne by partners outside of the department.

[Anonymous User]

It is so wild to me that for years I've been fighting tooth and nail to get my hours below 2400/year, asking partners repeatedly for more associate help on cases and pushing back when they try to put more on my plate, all the while there are associates everywhere (per this thread) not making their bonuses because of low hours.

This pisses me off. Stop staffing me on stuff when my hours are well ahead of most associates' hours. Give new cases to those shirking work.

Same problem. Drives me crazy.

Not to be jerk, but this is probably your own fault. If you're working a ton, maybe it's because you were working a ton and doing good work. The price for winning the pie eating contest is more pie. Stop winning if you don't want more.

[Anonymous User]

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[Anonymous User]

I know several senior associates who have never gotten a bonus. It's much more common than you'd think. At plenty of V100 firms the average associate bills 1700-1800 hours, sometimes even less. If you do acceptable work you're not going to be pushed out for billing 1700 hours, especially these days when many firms are desperate for bodies.

Just adding that while all that is true, 1700 can still be soul crushing. Imagine showing up to the office and doing nothing most of the day and then getting dumped on at 5 and then working 5 hours until 10, and then getting about 8 hours of work to do on a weekend. Because that is a 1800 billable year

This is the unspoken reason why wfh was so much better. The days you have nothing you're still available by email but you can go do errand, or read a book or play video games. Less wasted time. And working 5-10 is much more tolerable at home too.

100% this. At my firm I sometimes sat around all day, "acting busy," only to get something at 5 pm and my evening was ruined. Now, on slower days? I sleep in. Read a book. Go to the gym. Play some Halo Infinite between calls. Maybe work comes in the evening. Maybe it won't. But I won't have been sitting there for 8 hours thinking "why the hell am I here?!"

[Anonymous User]

Outside of 15-20 true lock step, no minimum firms, it’s exceedingly common for associates to miss bonuses for a variety of reasons. Low hours are the primary culprit but far from the only one. Plenty (a majority) of V100 law firms outside the Cravaths and Davis Polks of the world pay lip service to “market” by starting first years on scale but find myriad ways of reducing pay from second year onwards, either by failing to promote or withholding bonuses or straight up stealth layoffs for relatively junior associates.

[Anonymous User]

Outside of 15-20 true lock step, no minimum firms, it’s exceedingly common for associates to miss bonuses for a variety of reasons. Low hours are the primary culprit but far from the only one. Plenty (a majority) of V100 law firms outside the Cravaths and Davis Polks of the world pay lip service to “market” by starting first years on scale but find myriad ways of reducing pay from second year onwards, either by failing to promote or withholding bonuses or straight up stealth layoffs for relatively junior associates.

Is low hours because there just isn't enough billable work? It seems like Big Law requires associates to have no lives but a lot of waiting and standby?

[Anonymous User]

It can be (and often is) that your firm or your particular group doesn’t have enough billable work to go round, or it can be that people decide they don’t like working with you and don’t give you billable work. Right now most firms are swamped with work (in certain groups at least) but it can vary a lot with the economy.

[Anonymous User]

I am not completely sure, as I don't know how much my colleagues build, but what I can glean from everyone, is that there is no way everybody is putting in enough hours to hit their billables requirements. But nobody will ever admit to that. Whenever I ask someone, it's always about how insanely busy they are (this was true pre-COVID as well). I think the idea is of course that nobody wants to do more work than necessary.

So I think it is a bit of an unspoken secret one understands as they rise up through the ranks. Perhaps more controversially, this is also where I think padding billables comes in: sometimes I see people do inane tasks that no sane client would ever want to pay for if they really knew what was going on. But I see associates do them, because it's easy work, you can conceivably defend them as being important (even though it's not) and bill higher amounts. Easy way to get your bonus. I even think some are downright lying about their billables as well. But of course, nobody will honestly admit to this: everybody is always crazy busy. You'll never find an associate who willingly will declare they're having a low workload.

[Anonymous User]

I'm a junior who lateraled to a different firm and will not hit the hours requirement this year. In the time since I've lateraled I've barely been getting any work. My busiest month so far is less than 130 hours. I have asked around, always indicate I have availability, have never said no to staffing, and try my best with a good attitude (although it's a new practice area for me, so it's been tough to know what to do and the expectations are high). At what point do I worry they brought me in and don't have enough work? How long would they wait to fire me? V50 firm. Not really bummed about the bonus because after tax it isn't much and I haven't worked much this year to be honest.