Biglaw Firm's Raises Met With Skepticism From Associates
It's all about the conditions.
We’re halfway through February already, but that doesn’t mean Biglaw is done giving out raises. Just today, Perkins Coie, a firm that made $1,163,764,000 in gross revenue in 2022, making it #42 on the Am Law 100, announced its own set of associate raises.
Here’s the new compensation scale at the firm:
That sure *looks* a lot like the market compensation scale that debuted in late 2023 — and it’s even retroactive to January 1. But there’s a catch. Junior associates, classes 1-3, will get the raises, no questions asked. However, midlevel and senior associates must have met the hours requirement from the previous year (1950 hours) to get the raises. If an associate who misses the raise cut off hits 2000 hours this year (the hours expectation for 2024), they’ll receive a bonus equal to the raise amount to be made whole.
According to insiders at the firm, folks are not pleased with the terms and conditions placed on the firm’s largesse. That’s because there are apparently plenty of associates who didn’t hit their hours — not because they didn’t want to, but because there’s not enough work to go around in many offices. As a tipster said, “this policy is basically asking them to leave if their practice group doesn’t have enough work for them.”
You can read the firm’s full memo on the next page.
Remember everyone, 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 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 all of your help!
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. 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 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.
