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Bonus season came early this year, when the market standard was set by Milbank. But moving on bonuses the first week of November has some downsides — well, for the rest of the market, as some firms were caught flat-footed and weren’t able to match that scale immediately. Even perennial bonus leader Cravath had to take a few days to announce their match of the scale. But once Cravath got on board, we had the early adopters rush to announce their bonuses.
But then, nothing much happened. Crickets. On the one hand, it’s completely understandable — we are still a week out from Thanksgiving. But your Above the Law editors were getting antsy waiting for the next announcement, and I’m sure a lot of associates out there can feel me on that one. Fortunately, Sidley came through with their year-end bonus scale:
Class of 2018 – $15,000
Class of 2017 – $25,000
Class of 2016 – $50,000
Class of 2015 – $65,000
Class of 2014 – $80,000
Class of 2013 – $90,000
Class of 2012 – $100,000
Class of 2011+ – $100,000
The bonuses come with a catch however: Associates must bill a minimum of 2,000 hours, 1,800 of which must be client chargeable and/or legal services to the firm.
Remember, we depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.
And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we also use for all salary announcements), please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Thanks for your help!
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).