Kirkland Announces Bonuses... And Associates Aren't Pleased
The days of bonuses beating the market by 30 percent are behind us.
Is this all?
Kirkland may be the richest law firm around, but its bonuses have left associates feeling like it’s an off-brand law firm from a wholesale club.
The firm doesn’t announce lockstep bonuses with a tidy memo. But associates have historically landed bonuses 30-40 percent over market and sometimes upwards of double. More often it’s around 25 percent over. Last year, when the firm took in record profits, associates reported 10-15 percent premiums over the market. Was this a permanent downward trend? One tipster told us that the firm indicated that they would fix last year’s decline. In the tipster’s words, “They didn’t.”
Opening the black box of individualized bonuses is always tough, but we have multiple tips to work with at this point and it appears the firm stuck with something around 10-15 percent over market… though it looks like some high performers got close to 20 percent by our back of the envelope math.
Obviously, better than the market is still better than market. But Kirkland made its charge to the top of the Am Law universe by cultivating a reputation for paying top dollar. It’s how the firm aggressively lured talent and kept those lawyers working like machines as revenue rose higher and higher.
And a steady decline in bonus premiums over the last few years is not what associates expect from a firm with PPP that’s now north of $7 million.
Unsurprisingly, associates aren’t pleased. “No one is ever thrilled, but this was a slap in the face to the people doing the work,” wrote one. Another observed, “People are not pleased to say the least (and not just normal grumpy).” One tipster suggested that, while over market, their personal bonus figure still ended up lower than last year despite high hours.
Maybe the market has truly turned on the firm. We won’t know until we see this year’s numbers to check if that PPP figure has slumped significantly. Though that might not be enough to quell the decline in morale. And at least one associate isn’t buying it: “Blaming it on the current market is garbage.”
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] 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.
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.
