So far, the 2015 Big Law associate bonus season is shaping up to be high on payouts and low on surprises.
After Cravath, Swaine & Moore announced on Dec. 7 that it would repeat the bonus rates set last year by Davis Polk & Wardwell, about a dozen firms matched the scale. The bonuses range from $15,000 for associates who graduated from law school in 2014 to $100,000 for the most senior associates.
As always, there are outliers, however—and there’s welcome news for U.S. associates employed by firms across the pond. Magic Circle firms Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Clifford Chance each announced within the last week that their U.S. offices will also match the Cravath scale, keeping the U.K. firms’ U.S. bonuses in parity with their American peers.
Meanwhile, as in previous years, two top litigation firms— Boies, Schiller & Flexner and Susman Godfrey—are going their own way when it comes to bonuses.
At plaintiffs firm Susman Godfrey, 2015 bonuses averaged $110,000—$10,000 more than the top-earning associates at Cravath— according to name partner Stephen Susman, who spoke to The Am Law Daily by phone Wednesday. The bonuses range from $55,000 for the most junior associates who have worked a full year to $165,000 for senior associates who were not up for partner this year.
“When we have good luck, we try to share with everyone,” said Susman. He said that 2015 was one of the best years financially in the firm’s history.
Susman said that even nonlawyers at the firm got bigger year-end payouts this year. For every year they worked at the firm, employees got an additional 2 percent of their regular bonus, he said. Magic Circle Firms, Litigation leaders spread bonus cheer
“We don’t really pay attention to what the other firms are doing because our model is so different,” Susman said. “Fortunately we’ve never had—it could happen—but we’ve never had a year where we’ve had to pay under what the large New York firms are paying.”
About 60 percent of the firm’s income comes from contingency fees, according to Susman. In 2015, the firm recovered fees on a number of cases that had been
in the works for years, he said, but acknowledged that new cases can be hard to come by.
“There’s no question that it is harder to find good cases,” Susman said. “There are fewer of them around, so it is a very difficult market out there.”
Typically, he said, partners at Susman Godfrey start to worry in August or September that the year is not going so well financially. But usually by November, he said, “something wonderful happens.”
Note: This story has been updated to reflect Susman Godfrey’s estimate that 60 percent of its revenues are derived from contingency matters, and to clarify that
this is not the first year that Freshfields and Clifford Chance are matching the bonuses of U.S. peer firms.
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