(AUSA) When does AD-scale adjustment occur? Forum

[lacl]

I have read from a few threads that adjustments in pay (e.g. moving up from AD-26 to AD-27) occur sometime in April or May. Does this occur systematically by a certain date or does it differ by district?

[Anonymous User]

In both districts where I’ve worked, it’s been 2nd week in April to 1st week in May. Pretty sure it’s national, though can’t say that definitively.

[Anonymous User]

Is there no 2023 AUSA AD pay scale?

[Anonymous User]

There was a January 2023 adjustment for the AD scale. It was whatever the general federal adjustment was; 4.1%, I think. Also, locality pay rate were also adjusted, on average 0.5%.

[gaddockteeg]

In both districts where I’ve worked, it’s been 2nd week in April to 1st week in May. Pretty sure it’s national, though can’t say that definitively.

Just curious: if this happens on a set date, does this end up delaying adjustments that might otherwise due?

For instance, if I'm a 2017 grad, and I started working in September 2017 after passing the bar. When September 2023 rolls around, I'll have 6 years of experience and should be eligible for AD-26. It sounds like I nonetheless need to wait for April 2024 to actually get the adjustment?

[Anonymous User]

In both districts where I’ve worked, it’s been 2nd week in April to 1st week in May. Pretty sure it’s national, though can’t say that definitively.

Just curious: if this happens on a set date, does this end up delaying adjustments that might otherwise due?

For instance, if I'm a 2017 grad, and I started working in September 2017 after passing the bar. When September 2023 rolls around, I'll have 6 years of experience and should be eligible for AD-26. It sounds like I nonetheless need to wait for April 2024 to actually get the adjustment?

When you start is an exception (kind of like how you get insurance when you start working but if you want to make changes in subsequent years you have to wait for open season or whatever it’s called). You get paid by whatever experience you have when you start, so if you have 6 yrs’ experience when you start working as an AUSA, you’ll be paid at AD-26. So if you start working in October 2023, you’ll be paid at AD-26. But your next pay review will be April 2024, at which point you will still only have 6 yrs experience, so you won’t move up to AD-27. You will have 7 yrs experience as of Sept 2024 [on whatever date in September 2017 you started working], so technically you’d be eligible to move up to AD-27 at that point, but you can’t go up a grade until your next pay review (which, IME has always been April). So you will have to wait ~7 months after you hit 7 yrs actually to get paid at AD-27.

So yes, it delays adjustments for most people (anyone who started working in the fall after graduation) in that your pay doesn’t go up until some months after you technically become eligible for a particular grade. I guess the smallest delay would be for someone who for whatever reason didn’t start working as a lawyer until April, as this would minimize the gap between your work anniversary and the pay review date, but I think this would be uncommon.

The only real practical impact I can see is to think a little about how your start date and start-work anniversary line up. If you started working as a lawyer on Sept 15 2016, starting at a USAO after Sept 15 2023 will start you at a higher rate than if you start before Sept 15 2023. That said, if you started at the USAO on Sept 1, 2023, you would get an adjustment the following April, and you won’t if you start after your work anniversary. But you’d end up with ~7 months at AD-25 + 12 months at AD-26 between Sept 1, 2023 and April 2025, whereas if you started on Sept 15, 2023, you’d be paid at AD-26 the entire time between then and April 2025.

(I hope this doesn’t come across as confusingly as I feel like it does!)

[gaddockteeg]

Very interesting. Thanks for explaining that.

It was not confusing at all and the example(s) actually helped me understand it. Thank you!

Another question I just thought of: do raises in the office tend to occur at the same time as the adjustments?

For example, is there a raise within the same band on someone's work anniversary and then another when you move up a band? Or does it all happen at the same time? Also, what about in the example you gave where a new hire is at the same band for 18 months (ish). Does a new hire also get a raise within the same band, on a work anniversary, even if there's no move-up in band?

[Anonymous User]

The pay review in April/May is when everything pay-related happens - band increases and/or raises and/or bonuses (don’t get excited, I think my biggest bonus was $2000 and I’ve also received a bonus in lieu of a raise during a particularly bad budget year).

Actually, I take that back, I think you can get an award at any time throughout the year, which could be some cash ($1-2k) or an award of extra leave. Usually if you get something outside the annual pay review, it’s for a specific achievement, though I’ve also seen the whole office get a cash award in recognition of everyone working flat out.

But you do not get a raise on a work anniversary (either when you started a the USAO or started working as an attorney). Apart from the occasional award, everything financial is tied to the annual pay review. It’s partly logistic - you get reviewed annually, in either December/January, and your pay review depends somewhat on your annual rating. (I say somewhat because my sense is it’s very rare that your annual rating is high/low enough to affect your pay in any real material way, but since it’s possible, you can’t do the pay reviews until everyone’s ratings have been done and recorded. And in theory there’s a process for challenging your rating, too, though I don’t know anyone who’s ever done it. I think all this stuff has to be completed at all offices around the country before pay reviews can be done.)

Anyway, my experience has been that at the annual pay review, if you go up a grade/band, you do not get a raise on top of that. I don’t think there’s anything officially preventing it, but the band increases are fairly generous, so offices generally don’t add to that. So if you’re being paid at the 25th percentile of AD-26, at the next pay review you’ll go up to the 25th percentile of AD-27. In fact my bosses have always described the band increase itself as a raise, even though it’s not really discretionary and they have to give it to you (barring, I think in theory, truly abysmal work issues and a terrible annual review, but I have never heard of this actually happening).

If you don’t go up a band/grade at the annual pay review, you can and likely will get a raise, though it’s not guaranteed. IME these raises have been pretty small (I have had colleagues who came from other offices call my current one particularly stingy though); I feel like they want to stretch out the time until you hit the cap, maybe because my office has a lot of lifers. I also don’t feel like there’s much discussion/negotiation of raises and they just get handed down from on high (I think there is also a general interest in keeping people with the same amount of experience at similar salaries). But I am the stereotypical woman who sucks at negotiation/advocating for more money and at talking about this with colleagues, so it may be all the other people at my seniority have successfully argued for more, who knows.

(Oh, last thought - if you actually jump onto a management track you will get a pay increase that will kick in when you get that title, but I have not done so and have no idea how that works.)

[gaddockteeg]

Got it, thanks. I'm in private practice but think often about making the jump to a USAO. Salary concerns are probably the only thing keeping me from doing it.

Having a better understanding of the pay structure is very useful/helpful.