The First Biglaw Firm To Match Cravath’s Mega-Money Salary Scale

// Cravath waited a good and long time to make a salary move, upping the ante to $415,000 for its most senior associates after Milbank and Davis Polk had already gotten dozens of firms to follow their lead. We wondered for a brief moment yesterday how long it would take for other Biglaw firms to step up and match Cravath’s incredibly generous cash compensation for associates. The answer was apparently not long at all.

Quinn Emanuel — a firm that brought in $1,301,077,000 gross revenue in 2020, putting it in 28th place in the most recent Am Law 100 ranking — announced that it would be matching Cravath yesterday afternoon, shortly after the compensation leader raised the stakes for Biglaw salaries. This is what associate pay will now look like for attorneys at the powerhouse litigation firm:

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• Class of 2021: $215,000
• Class of 2020: $225,000
• Class of 2019: $250,000
• Class of 2018: $295,000
• Class of 2017: $345,000
• Class of 2016: $370,000
• Class of 2015: $400,000
• Class of 2014: $415,000

As with almost all prior announcements, Quinn Emanuel is making these raises retroactive to January 1, and associates can expect to see their new salaries in their March 31 paychecks. Congratulations!

(Flip to the next page to read the full memo from Quinn Emanuel.)

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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.

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked 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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2022 Associate Salary Increase, Biglaw, Bonus News Alerts, Bonuses, Money, Quinn Emanuel