Biglaw Firm Gives Out Year-End Bonuses, Remains Conspicuously Silent On Any Special Bonuses
Tipsters say it negatively impacts recruiting.
Folks at Arnold & Porter were already miffed about the firm’s harsh stance on hours this year — the 2,000-hour threshold remained in place despite 2020 being, you know, 2020. Now the firm’s year-end bonus announcement has come, and for the majority of associates, it looks like they won’t be getting full market (year-end and special) bonuses this year, even if they hit that 2k threshold.
In an email that went around yesterday, co-managing partner Michael Daneker revealed the bonus grid at the firm:
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No, nothing’s been cut off from this bonus grid. Despite peer firms putting quite a few more more class years on the grid, at A&P they all get lumped into “senior associates.”
According to the email from the firm (available in full on the next page), senior associates will have individualized bonuses that take the prevailing market rate into account. They also indicate they intend to award senior associate bonuses “up to” $140,000, which would account for both the year-end and special bonuses on the Cravath scale. But as is always true of firms with individualized bonuses, there’s no way to track how what percentage of senior associate are actually making market bonuses.
So, it looks like senior associates *might* get market bonuses, but what about midlevel or junior associates? The grid above doesn’t mention any special bonuses for them. Though the email did mention productivity bonuses for those that were super busy (2,400 hours busy) which will be up to 20 percent of their base bonus.
Tipsters at the firm has some pretty harsh words about the system, with one of them saying:
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The lack of transparency is annoying and is why we always lose candidates to Wilmer and Covington.
As always, we depend on you when it comes to bonus news. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”) 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.
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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).
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