You Don’t Get To Be At The Top Of The Biglaw Heap Without Getting In On The Associate Raise Trend

// The associate raises are coming in fast and furious.

Remember it was way back in January that Milbank made the first move in the 2022 associate salary wars. After *weeks* of (mostly) crickets, yesterday Davis Polk announced their own raises — a match of the Milbank scale for junior associates, but more money for midlevel and senior associates. And now the rest of the market is catching up.

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Of course we *knew* that Skadden would pony up the money — the same money that its competitors are handing to associates. After all, the firm is ranked #5 on the Am Law 100 with an impressive $2,662,890,000 in gross revenue in 2020. And with the white-hot lateral market for associates, the pressure will be on for firms to match this standard.

This evening, the firm announced the following compensation scale:

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These raises will be retroactive to January 1 — the same effective date as the Milbank bump — and will will hit bank accounts on March 15th. You can read the full memo on the next page.

*** Wondering if the grass is greener on the in-house side? Click here for a look inside the black box of corporate counsel pay in our 2021 In-House Compensation Report. ***

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!

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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).

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2022 Associate Salary Increase, Biglaw, Bonus News Alerts, Bonuses, Money, Skadden