Another elite Biglaw firm has stepped out to join the COVID-19 bonus wars, and this time, it’s all about the hours. Let’s get this party started.
Over at Weil Gotshal, the more hours you’ve billed, the more money you’ll get. For all firms that came before this announcement, bonuses were simply based on associate class year. We’ll do a quick comparison of the bonus scales. Here’s an excerpt from a memo that was sent by Weil executive partner Barry Wolf (available in full on the next page), explaining why the firm is doing things this way, and what their bonus schedule looks like:
We recognize that, given varying client demand levels, the workloads taken on to meet the increased demand we have faced during this period were not equally shared. To account for these differences, we will be paying the bonus out not by class year but by the schedule set forth below based on annualized hours worked during this calendar year (January 1 – August 31).
- Below 1800 hours – $10,000
- 1800-1999 hours – $20,000
- 2000-2299 hours – $30,000
- 2300-2599 hours – $40,000
- More than 2600 hours – $50,000
WOW, a $50,000 bonus — that sure sounds nice! Now, let’s take a look at the Davis Polk scale again, so we can see how things measure up:
- Class of 2019: $7,500
- Class of 2018: $10,000
- Class of 2017: $20,000
- Class of 2016: $27,500
- Class of 2015: $32,500
- Class of 2014: $37,000
- Class of 2013: $40,000
The most relevant question here seems to be, how many people at Weil will wind up worse off than they would if the firm had broken these bonuses down by class year? It’s incredibly easy to offer a $50K bonus when you know that only a few people will qualify for one. Thus far, we haven’t heard any complaints, so we’ll have to wait and see how things shake out.
UPDATE (4:25 p.m.): Hold that thought, because some people are not at all thrilled with these bonuses. “[P]artners have been telling associates to limit billing to clients and bill excess to nonbillable and have not been giving out billable work despite requests for it,” says one disappointed associate. Yikes. Here are some additional thoughts from another one of our sources at Weil:
[A]ssociates are not happy. After encouraging associates to take vacation in August, the firm cuts off annualizing hours are the end of that month. The joke is on you if you took that vacation! It is also a very odd way of doing things for a firm with “no hours requirement.” For a senior associate to make market, this memo imposes a minimum of 2,300 hours. Bankruptcy associates are maybe the only ones happy with this. Everyone else is pissed.
Perhaps most important of all, Wolf notes in his memo that this fall bonus “will not impact the year-end bonuses that will be paid in January 2021” and that those bonuses will be “at least equal to those paid in January 2020.”
Congratulations to everyone at Weil on their bonuses.
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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.