Category: News Feeds

Legal professionals agree that the pandemic accelerated the critical role of technology in the future success of their law firms and legal departments, but only a third believe their organizations are well prepared for addressing technology’s increasing importance.

This is a key finding of the 2021 Wolters Kluwer Future Ready Lawyer Survey Report, the third year that Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. has conducted this survey, designed to provide insights into how the legal profession is evolving and how prepared legal professionals are to face the future.

It polled 700 legal professionals across the U.S. and Europe working in law firms, legal departments and business services firms.

Organizations Poorly Prepared

More than three-quarters of those who responded to the survey identified two trends as having the biggest impact on their organizations over the next three years: the increasing importance of legal technology and the increasing volume and complexity of information.

Yet only 33% said their organizations are very prepared to address the increasing importance of legal technology and only 32% said they are very prepared to address the increased volume and complexity of information.

While those readiness percentages are low, they reflect an improvement over last year’s survey, when just 28% felt their organizations were very prepared for technology’s increasing importance and 29% were very prepared for the greater volume and complexity of information.

Across all areas likely to impact their organizations over the next three years, just 36% said their organizations are very prepared.

“While technology has increasingly become a key enabler for successful law firms and legal departments, the pandemic put a spotlight on how critical it is to business continuity – in supporting the organization and staff, as well as delivering service – and to future resilience,” the survey concluded.

Clients Demand Tech

The increasing importance of legal technology is reflected in corporate clients’ expectations for their outside firms, the survey found.

When considering outside firms, 91% of clients say they now ask or plan to ask the firms to describe the technology they use to be more productive and efficient. That is a 10-point increase over last year’s survey.

“The pandemic and the need for remote and automated solutions likely helped to accelerate the number of legal departments focusing on this as an evaluation criterion,” the survey suggested.

Even when working with current firms, technology is a top priority for legal departments. The survey found that 82% of legal departments say it is important that the firms they work with fully leverage technology.

In fact, of the various criteria clients use to evaluate law firms, use of technology ranked highest, followed by specialization, price, understanding client needs, alternative fee arrangements, and demonstrated process innovation.

In contrast, law firms believed the top criteria clients apply is their ability to understand client needs, with use of technology ranked the third most-important criteria.

Even as legal departments look to their outside firms for greater proficiency in technology, they are expanding their own use of technology, the survey found.

Legal departments plan to increase their investments in technology in the next three years, particularly in technology that can improve their productivity and enhance collaboration and transparency with their outside firms.

Among the leading technologies in which legal departments plan to invest are collaboration tools for document and contract drafting/reviewing, automation of document and contract creation, corporate e-meeting and e-voting management, workflow management and process automation, and document and contract workflow management.

Firms Investing in Tech

As for law firms, they say they are accelerating initiatives to improve efficiency, productivity and client services. Three quarters report they are investing in new technology to support firm operations and client work, 42% are creating dedicated innovation functions or groups, and 42% are formalizing how they collect client feedback.

The percentage of firms planning to increase their technology investment rose slightly this year, from 60% in 2020 to 63%.

Top technologies in which firms plan to invest include e-signatures, automation of document and contract creation, collaboration tools for document and contract drafting/reviewing, document and contract workflow management, and cloud-based services.

Impact of the Pandemic

The survey looked at the impact of the pandemic on the business of law and found that it was uneven.

Forty percent of respondents saw their business decrease during the first year of the pandemic, while 31% saw an increase, and 27% said it stayed the same.

Of those whose businesses declined, the survey asked when they expected to return to pre-pandemic scale. Forty-one percent expected it to return by the end of this year, 51% by the end of 2022, and 6% said it would be 2023 or later.

Of the firms whose businesses increased, half said it increased by 11-20% and another quarter said it increased by more than 20%.

Technology was cited by 91% of firms as important or very important to them in their ability to continue delivering legal services during the pandemic. But most had a rough start at the onset of the pandemic, the survey found, with just 30% saying their organization was very prepared to transition to serving clients remotely.

Asked about the technologies that helped them get through the pandemic, nearly all respondents said that they increased their use of one or more of these:

• Document management.
• Internal collaboration software.
• Microsoft Office applications.
• Contract management.
• External collaboration.
• Secure file sharing/extranet.
• Case/matter management.
• Videoconferencing apps.
• Solutions for corporate meetings management.

As legal organizations emerge from the pandemic, the survey found, legal professionals believe various aspects of remote working will continue to apply in how they work:

• Employees using multiple devices for work: 73%.
• Improving digital skills for working remotely: 68%.
• Prioritize virtual/digital communications with clients: 67%.
• More commonly interact with judges via remote hearings: 67%.
• Percentage of employees working from home: 66%.
• Remote collaboration with colleagues/third parties: 66%.
• Control of work/spending on law firms/legal service providers: 64%.
• Prioritize controlling time/expenses per client/case: 61%.
• Internal staff levels in favor of collaboration with third-party resources: 58%.

Tech Leaders Best Positioned for Future

A hallmark of the Future Ready Lawyer survey is to examine how firms that effectively leverage technology (Technology Leaders) perform as compared to other firms.

Not surprisingly, when the pandemic began Technology Leaders were much better prepared, with 46% of them saying that they were very prepared to support clients remotely, compared to just 20% of Transitioning firms (those that are planning to better leverage technology) and 8% of Trailing firms (those with no plans to better leverage technology).

In addition, Leaders were more likely to have increased both their profitability and their business during the pandemic year, the survey found.

We have yet to fully grasp the short- and long-term impacts of the pandemic, the survey concludes, “but one thing is certain: the digital transformation of the industry gained unprecedented momentum, which continues today.

“In the past year, technology was a lifeline to the legal profession, in serving clients, connecting with colleagues and driving efficiency and productivity. As the industry continues to recover and a ‘new normal’ emerges, technology will be a driving force. The question remains, who will be future ready?’

[Disclosure: The Future Ready Lawyer Survey report included a section of “Insights from Luminaries” on the impact of the pandemic. I was among those who contributed commentary. I received nothing of value for my contribution.]

It’s been a long, challenging year+ with a pandemic that just wouldn’t quit and legal work that also just wouldn’t stop. But now the COVID vaccine is widely available and Biglaw has decided to reward associates for their hard work with cold, hard cash.

The raise party got started with Milbank, but then Davis Polk came over the top. Now it’s just a race to see how quickly the firms can match that scale.

The latest firm to make news for associate raises is Goodwin Procter. It’s not a huge surprise that a firm ranked 23rd on the latest Am Law rankings is able to match these salary numbers (especially when the firm is already going out of its way to court laterals), but it’s sure nice to see. For associates, the new compensation scale for U.S.-based associates at the firm will be as follows, effective July 1:

As for folks outside the U.S., the firm said they will continue to pay market-based salaries there. And for non-associates, this is what Goodwin is doing:

We are evaluating the impact of the increase to the associate salary scale on our counsel and other professional track attorneys on a case-by-case basis and expect to communicate the impact individually. Any change to compensation for professional track attorneys will also be effective July 1, 2021.

You can read the full memo on the next page.

Remember everyone, we depend on your tips to stay on top of this stuff. So when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Raises”). 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’ll also use for 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.

---

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).

Biglaw firms are furiously matching salary increases this week, and Joe and Kathryn walk through the latest announcements, how we got here, the impact across the country, and the fate of the whiny corporate clients out there. This episode doesn’t have a cash register sound effect, which is really a shame and Joe takes full responsibility for this oversight.

Raises for everyone! That’s the feel in Biglaw rn, and we’re happy to say the good news is spreading to some of the boutique firms as well.

The latest firm to spread the love (read: money) is D.C.-based litigation boutique Wilkinson Stekloff. Yesterday, they announced to associates that they too would be getting raises set to the Davis Polk scale. In reality, it isn’t a surprise — the firm has proven in the past it has what it takes to meet (or even beat) Biglaw compensation,

Effective July 1, this is the new compensation scale at Wilkinson:

You can read the full memo on the next page.

Remember everyone, we depend on your tips to stay on top of this stuff. So when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Raises”). 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’ll also use for 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.

---

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).

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Margarita Coale to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.

When I graduated from law school in 1999, I had no crystal ball to know what the future would hold for my legal journey. I did what many “traditional path” law students do — I clerked for a district judge and then joined a prestigious Biglaw practice that focused on restructuring. Since then, I’ve traveled to a smaller firm, taught, and started a solo practice. I’m very happy in my current solo practice, which focuses on representing romance novelists, science fiction authors, and podcasters, and I wanted to share some of the (many) lessons I have learned along the way.

Looking At The Greener Grass

During my time at Biglaw I worked on some amazing cases and forged mentorships, friendships, and personal relationships that continue to this day. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be flying all over the world to work on the restructuring of the century — the Enron bankruptcy.

Working for a 2,000-plus lawyer firm was a dream come true. While I do not regret joining a big international law firm and working countless hours during the six years I was there, it presented challenges personally and professionally. Was billing those hours something I wanted to do for the foreseeable future? Once the partnership track was looming, and I had to face a decision about whether to move, I had to ask myself: “Truthfully, do I see myself there in five years?” Pregnant with our second child, and mother to a toddler, I couldn’t see how I could make it happen. So, I decided to try something else. And this was the first time I “retooled.”

I found an opportunity to join the law faculty at a nearby, regional law school and was very excited to pursue it. My colleagues were great, and the work schedule was more flexible, but I found out that I missed law practice (shockingly). After a couple of years of teaching and the birth of our third child I was eager to return to court.

Looking for my next opportunity (and deciding whether to go back to Biglaw or not), I was invited to join a medium-size local law firm of Biglaw refugees. I was coming in to build and provide support to current firm clients and help with the restructuring and litigation department. The hours were more flexible, and clients were local. But not having practiced locally before, I found it challenging to have a thriving restructuring law practice without the steady flow of work from large Biglaw clients.

Around the five-year mark at this firm a New York Times bestseller author approached me with a question about whether her contract with a publisher would be enforceable in bankruptcy. From this one case, an entire new law practice developed for me. Five years later I left my midsize firm. I now have my own solo IP practice, focused on author copyright issues and contracts, with over 60 clients. One of my client’s cases was the subject of a New York Times feature and has drawn a lot of interest in the IP bar — but it also was stressful, time-consuming, and personally challenging .

Just like falling in love, you have to make sure you fall in love with the same one over and over — and with law, I needed to do that too. I do not want to focus on the why I left Biglaw but on the pointers I wish someone had given me once I made the decision to go. The biggest challenge in all of these retoolings has been to identify specifically what I wanted and what I specifically needed to do to get there. Identifying “what you want” is a lot more elusive than what it may originally seem, and the grass really does always seem greener on the other side.

Five Lessons Learned

Here are the top 5 questions/considerations that you need to address when you are thinking about a change. Some I learned with trial and error — and some with a little pain as well.

Lesson 1: Make sure you understand what you NEED in your new venture before making the change. Ask yourself: Is the change I am making going to require me to learn new skills, or relearn what I had always taken as granted? For example, when I moved from Biglaw, I gave up 24-hour word processing, paralegals that would come to the office at any time, and Westlaw and Lexis access that was basically free. I “knew” I was giving up these support systems — but I had not thought through what that really meant in terms of how I would replace them. I realize now that I did not think enough about the basic logistics of what I need to succeed where I was going.

Lesson 2: You need a business plan and a network. You are excited about your new venture. But are potential clients? The question you have to ask yourself is: How am I going to develop clients to continue to grow my career and sustain my income? When I went from a national law practice to a more local one, I realized I had never even joined the local bar association. The lawyers I was practicing with and against had local networks they had developed. I did not, and I felt that put me at a big disadvantage. I had not considered the importance of this factor when I joined the smaller firm.

Lesson 3: How am I going to cover my basics and how do I allocate money to all the things I never thought about. How much do I want to earn? What about health care? What about malpractice insurance? When I decided to go solo I suddenly had to make tons of very practical decisions in these areas. Other issues to think about are whether you need to set up a client funds account, or how to pay franchise taxes.

Lesson 4: Am I making the right move? Did I ask the right questions when choosing where to go? Your choice is never just “stay here or go there.” You have more options than you think. Every time I have made a move I was reminded, in hindsight, about other options I could have considered — for example, when I began teaching, I simply failed to consider other practice options as alternatives where I could have kept on going serving clients and going to court.

Lesson 5: Does my move have potential, or is it the same wrapped in another package? Related to the business plan question above, you have to ask yourself: What are the growth opportunities in this new position — am I growing my practice or someone else’s? If I go to a smaller firm, am I just changing the name on the letterhead, or am I going to have opportunities to build “my clients” and “my practice”?

In Sum

In my search for a “perfect” fit I found myself not only retooling from Biglaw, but also retooling practice areas. I now feel that I have found the perfect fit — but it did not come without its own stresses and challenges. And it continues to bring up both big-picture questions (what are my goals, what do I need to get there) and highly practical ones about bank accounts, taxes, and the like. I hope that my experiences can be helpful to you as you travel on your journey in the law.

---

Margarita Coale is a solo practitioner in Dallas, focused exclusively on the representation of authors, and romance writers in particular. A love of romance novels is one of the few constants in her well-travelled, adventurous life. Born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico, she attended law school at the University of Texas, worked for several years at the white-shoe New York firm representing Enron in its epic bankruptcy filing, and then taught procedure and international law at the Texas Wesleyan School of Law in Fort Worth. Her current practice grew out of her business-law work and has expanded to include writers worldwide on a host of commercial and intellectual property issues. “Mom” to four children (and wife to one more), she also involved in scouting, her children’s schools in various capacities and coordinates volunteers for the junior high and high school. She can often be heard speaking to her clients about their universes in negotiation for mystical babies and hopes in 2021 to be able to travel and visit family and finally rock climb her way through some mountains.

Buckle up — today’s going be a busy day in Biglaw.

See, last night the good folks at Cravath finally announced associate raises, after Milbank announced associate raises last Thursday and then Davis Polk came over the top of those numbers. Meaning the market seems to have coalesced around the new $205,000 standard.

So, the latest firm to get on board is Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. The firm made $2,446,000,000 in gross revenue in 2020, making it 7th on the latest Am Law 100 ranking, and they’re flexing their financial muscles to show it. In a firmwide voicemail, it was announced associate compensation will move to the scale set by Davis Polk last week. New salaries, effective July 1, will range from $205,000 for the class of 2020 to $365,000 for the class of 2013.

Congrats to the hardworking associates on their raises!

Remember everyone, we depend on your tips to stay on top of this stuff. So when your firm matches, please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Raises”). 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’ll also use for 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.

---

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).

Whether you are in-house counsel or outside counsel, I’m willing to bet that for many of us, the sheer number of emails can be the bane of our existence.

I have yet to meet someone who says, “I love getting hundreds of emails every day, especially long email strings with subject lines that start with at least three FW FW FW!”

For many of us, the reality is that email is simply a necessary part of doing business.

At the same time, it doesn’t mean that we can’t improve our email skills to get the information we need in a timely manner and create good email karma.

So under that guise (and not out of writer’s block), here are a handful of email hacks that may make your life as in-house counsel incrementally better.

Make Your Subject Line Game Strong

First, make sure the subject line succinctly — and actually — describes the content of the email and why you’re sending it. Nothing is more frustrating than skipping or deeming an email low priority because the subject line is something generic like “how are you,” when it actually contains an important, time-sensitive ask. Points if you identify in the subject line if it’s “FYI only” or “Response Requested by X date” or “Time-Sensitive.” And in case it’s not intuitive, email is more likely going to get read if it doesn’t start with three forwards (“FW”). I have also received emails with the short ask in the subject line itself followed by “EOM” (end of message), which also works for me — although it’s hard for me to personally do the same.

Lead With The Ask

OK, not literally. You do need to have an appropriate salutation, and depending on your relationship and company culture and the person you are emailing, you either cut directly to the chase or insert something personal like, “hope you had a great weekend” before launching into your ask.

But the very next thing should be your ask.

I even go as far as to use the label: “The Ask” to identify my ask, and then start an entirely new paragraph with the why and any important background.

Highlight The Deadline

Do this by starting a new paragraph with the deadline, if there is one. And while I am not a fan of creating a fake deadline, it’s a fact that some people prioritize based on deadline so it may be helpful to identify an ideal response date. And while I use this sparingly, if the ask is for an executive, I’ll often note it apologetically, especially if I have requested an unreasonable response time.

For my grammarians, it may seem odd to have one-line paragraphs, but most people just skim email so I find that highlighting the ask and the deadline separately creates a better chance of success at catching someone’s attention, especially if they also received hundreds of emails a day.

Flag For Follow Up

While you could technically flag for the recipient, that’s a bit bold for my taste. However, I will flag sent emails in my outlook so they show up on my “Task” list so I know to follow up in a couple of days, a week, or two weeks, depending upon the urgency of my ask.

Use Your Out Of Office To Set Boundaries

This one is hard, I know. Especially if you have been conditioned by Biglaw to be ultraresponsive. And I know plenty of in-house lawyers who choose not to use out of office because they prefer to appear available at all times. It’s certainly a personal choice.

For me, it’s important to lead with authenticity, and it’s a fact that I really can’t be on call 24/7. It’s unrealistic and unhealthy and can only lead to burnout. We all need time to unplug and recharge, and I think people can understand and respect that even lawyers need time off.

Here’s an example of what I might leave as my out of office:

“Hi! I’m sorry I missed your email, but I am currently on PTO, taking some time off to rest and rejuvenate and spend quality time with family. If you need assistance, please reach out to X. Or if this is truly an emergency that cannot wait until X date when I return, call or text me at X. Otherwise, I hope you find some time to recharge too.”

With a message like this, I’m explaining my why for lack of immediate responsiveness. At the same time, I’m not leaving my clients hanging. I refer them to another resource, but still make it clear that I will make myself available if it’s an emergency that cannot wait. Since I have used this approach, in my five years in-house, I have only received one emergency call during vacation (and it truly was an emergency).

What are your best email hacks?

---

Meyling “Mey” Ly Ortiz is in-house at Toyota Motor North America. Her passions include mentoring, championing belonging, and a personal blog: TheMeybe.com. At home, you can find her doing her best to be a “fun” mom to a toddler and preschooler and chasing her best self on her Peloton. You can follow her on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/meybe/). And you knew this was coming: her opinions are hers alone.

Many associates on the West Coast seem to be waiting for Godot when it comes to their firms announcing the adoption of new $205K market salaries, but other firms have quickly gotten in gear and decided to pay associates what they owe them for their intense dedication.

One of those firms is Munger Tolles & Olson, a preeminent Am Law 200 firm that we’ve likened to the Wachtell of the West for attracting top talent. Today, perhaps in celebration of winning the Affordable Care Act case before the Supreme Court, the firm decided to match the new salary scale. If you’ve somehow forgotten, this is what it looks like at the firm:

• 2021: $202,500
• 2020: $205,000
• 2019: $215,000
• 2018: $240,000
• 2017: $275,000
• 2016: $305,000
• 2015: $330,000
• 2014: $350,000
• 2013+: $365,000

In even brighter news, the firm is making its match for summer associates retroactive to the beginning of the summer. That’s a pretty nice hike.

Congratulations to everyone at Munger Tolles on their raises — especially the law students, who will now be the highest paid of all summer associates on this pay scale. Will any other law firms match Munger Tolles & Olson’s generosity towards summer associates? We certainly hope so!

(Flip to the next page to see the full memo from Munger Tolles & Olson.)

We depend on your tips to stay on top of this stuff. 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’ll also use for 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.

---

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.

If you are a Biglaw partner, you may have heard this compensation rule of thumb: you should be taking home a third of the revenue you generate for the firm. The 33% rule has the advantage of being simple, and it makes for a reasonable starting point. But to really know whether you are capturing a fair share of the value you create, it’s important to consider some other factors.

Your hours vs. your team’s hours

The first distinction you’ll want to make is between the hours you bill and those billed by the people working for you, such as associates and service partners. The 33% rule is supposed to apply to all revenue for which you are responsible. But we can make things more precise by breaking that revenue into two segments.

As a general rule, you should make about 40% of revenue from hours you billed personally. As for the hours billed by members of your team, it depends how profitable those lawyers are for the firm. Associates at some firms are substantially more profitable than others. The more profitable your associates, and the more leverage your book has, the greater the share of your team’s revenue you can expect to take home.

RPL and leverage are the key metrics

To understand what share of team revenue should accrue to you, consider how your firm stacks up on two key metrics: revenue per lawyer (RPL) and leverage.

RPL is critical because it is so poorly correlated with associate salaries. You could imagine a different compensation model in which firms paid associates a standard share of the revenue they generated, either individually or on average across the firm. But as we know, that isn’t how this industry works. Instead, all top-tier firms pay associates more or less the same salaries based on class year. As a result, partners at firms with relatively high RPL get to divide a much larger profit pool than partners at “top” firms with low RPL.

Within the Am Law 100, the spread between high and low RPL is striking. Firms at the low end have RPL of around $500,000. For example, Lewis Brisbois is the lowest of the Am Law 100, at $434,000. Firms at the high end have RPL close to 4X that of the low-end firms. Sullivan & Cromwell, for example, clocks in above $1.9 million. (Wachtell is in a league of its own, with RPL in excess of $3.6 million.) Granted, a Sullivan & Cromwell associate earns higher total compensation than a Lewis Brisbois lawyer in the same class year, but that multiple is nowhere near 4X.

Now, RPL isn’t everything. We also have to consider leverage. If a partner’s book can feed a relatively large number of associates, the proportion of the team’s revenue that should accrue to the rainmaking partner will be higher. And to be fair to Lewis Brisbois, their partnership is doing well on that dimension, with leverage of 9.99 (second-highest among the Am Law 100).

How does your practice compare to the firm average?

Your firm’s overall RPL and leverage are important considerations, but unless the partnership has a pure lockstep compensation model, the performance of your practice relative to the firm average is also critical. A good starting point for thinking about this dimension is to compare the firm’s profit margin to the share of your revenue that you are taking home. For example, let’s say your firm’s profit margin is 45%. Are you being paid 45% of the revenue you are generating?

If not, consider how your practice may differ from others in the firm. Does it have lower leverage than the firm average? Are you personally billing fewer hours than your peers in the partnership? If the answer to both of these questions is no, then your compensation should reflect the firm profit margin. If it doesn’t, you are likely underpaid, and you may want to consider your options.

---

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. Michael Allen is the CEO of Lateral Link. He is based in the Los Angeles office and focuses exclusively on Partner and General Counsel placements for top firms and companies. Prior to founding Lateral Link in 2006, he worked as an attorney at both Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Irell & Manella LLP. Michael graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, San Diego before earning his JD, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.

---

Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices world-wide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click here to find out more about us.

“Shri’ve” been waiting on this one. OK, Shriver isn’t really conducive to this game.

In any event, yes, we’re talking about Fried Frank, who announced associate raises as part of today’s wave of firms that likely held out to see if Cravath was going to spice up this raise cycle even more.

Of course, Cravath opted to merely call the bet on the table opening the floodgates of firm announcements.

At this point, everyone knows what the salary scale looks like, but as a refresher, here’s what Fried Frank is offering as of July 1.

Comp Year	Annual Base Pay
2021	$202,500
2020	$205,000
2019	$215,000
2018	$240,000
2017	$275,000
2016	$305,000
2015	$330,000
2014	$350,000
2013	$365,000
2012	$375,000

The firm joins the clutch of employers offering $375K for the class of 2012 and confirms that it will up summer associate pay to match the 2021 scale.

The full memo is available here.

Please help us help you when it comes to salary news at other firms. As soon as your firm’s memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Salary”) or text us (646-820-8477). 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 Salary & Bonus Alerts, 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.

---

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.