Biglaw, Bonuses, Money

Associate Bonus Watch: Which Firm Is Offering Up To $50K For Associates To Stay Put?

This Biglaw firm is throwing lots of money at a retention problem.

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Say your firm has been repeatedly raided for months on end, and now that the fourth quarter has arrived, the number of partners who have left has reached double digits. You’re afraid that associates will soon follow those partners to their new firms. What do you do? What can you do?

Rather than forcefully shoving their heads in the sand and hoping the problem goes away, the management team at Ropes & Gray has decided to handle it in a très Biglaw way, by throwing money at it — lots and lots of money.

Following the departures of at least 22 partners, Ropes & Gray has offered retention bonuses of up to $50,000 to an untold number of associates in the United States, London, and Hong Kong. We understand that these bonuses are being paid in addition to the firm’s regular associate bonuses.

Legal Week has more information on those who are being paid to stay:

According to former partners, roughly five associates in London were offered payments of around £20,000 ($26,580), while other former partners claim that several associates in Hong Kong and the U.S. were offered up to $50,000 to stay at the firm.

Ropes & Gray made the counteroffers after a number of associates whose partners had moved on to other firms were approached to follow them. Sources have suggested to Legal Week that around 60 percent of Ropes & Gray’s counteroffers to associates had been accepted.

But why would associates want to hang around at a firm that’s leaking partners like a sieve? According to David Chapin, Ropes & Gray’s managing partner, associates needn’t worry; the firm has had a great year, and other firms are desperate to snatch up partners from Ropes because they’re so great: “We have really good partners that other firms want—if I wasn’t having my partners recruited I’d be worried about the kind of partners we had. We don’t get too hung up on short-term fluctuations.”

If you’re an associate who’s been paid a retention bonus to remain with the firm, we’d love to know how long the firm expects you to stay put. Get in touch with us via email (subject line: “Ropes Retention Bonus”). In any event, congratulations to all Ropes & Gray associates who received a retention bonus! Bonuses on top of future bonuses which could be quite lucrative is certainly nothing to complain about.

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And now, a brief word on Biglaw bonuses, generally. Bonus season is just a few weeks away, and while we love covering those announcements, we need your help. As soon as your firm’s bonus memo comes out, please email it to us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Bonus”). We always keep our sources on bonus stories anonymous. There’s no need to send the memo using your firm email account; your personal email account is fine. Please be sure to include the memo as proof; we like to post complete bonus memos as a service to our readers. You can take a photo of the memo and attach as a picture if you are worried about metadata in a PDF or Word file. Thanks!

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Ropes & Gray Issues Bonuses to Retain Associates Amid Lateral Raids [Legal Week]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law 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.

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