Many Big Law associates are already thinking about how they’re planning on putting their year-end bonuses to use, as I just learned on a jealousy-inducing visit over to Reddit. (Yes, I’m well aware of their long hours.)

Given the healthy year that most large firms are having, it’s safe to say that most of the usual suspects will, at the very least, match Milbank’s opening salvo, even if they’re not quite having the “record year” that Milbank chairman Scott Edelman highlighted in an internal memo.

But two questions remain. What figure are they going to match? And when?

For the first question, remember that Milbank—already coming off a record 2023, in which revenue grew nearly 18% to exceed $1.5 billion—has been bonus-happy this year. The year-end bonuses, which start at $15,000 for first years and top out at $115,000 for the most senior associates, follow a smaller round of summer bonuses that were not matched by peers. Putting them together, the firm’s first-year associates will have earned $21,000 beyond their base salaries, while the most senior associates will receive up to $140,000 in special pay.

If peers do elect to roll up the value of these summer bonuses into their year-end bonuses, that would lead to cumulative payments that would still trail the Big Law high water mark for yearly bonuses. That was back in 2021—when top firms, flush from a surge in work that followed the U.S. economy’s recovery from COVID lockdowns—delivered special bonuses on top of year-end bonuses, in addition to a previous round of summer bonuses. In total, these payments ranged from $31,000 to $202,000. And, remember, that year also saw a bump in associate base salaries.

With all that in mind, a full match certainly seems plausible.

But let’s dig into the timing. While there’s no doubt that managing partners have already run the math on what impact matching these bonuses will have on their own bottom line, they’re likely waiting on one more shoe to drop.

Once upon a time, Cravath Swaine & Moore was the market setter when it came to associate salaries and bonuses. Now that Milbank has usurped that role, Cravath still seemingly controls the floodgates. Only when that firm announces whether it’s matching (or, in some years, exceeding) the marker that Milbank laid down, will the rest of the market move.

Take last year, when Milbank made its announcement on Nov. 7 of both bonuses and associate raises, no other firms budged until Cravath largely matched Milbank’s package (with a slight salary bump for senior associates) on Nov. 28. That’s the second year in a row the firm has waited until after Thanksgiving.

But looking at the last six years, in three of those years, Cravath moved on the Monday before Thanksgiving, opening the door for its competitors promptly to follow suit. Good timing for those fiscally prudent associates to know exactly what kind of splurge they can make on Black Friday deals, even if they’re relying on credit until the bonuses hit their accounts by Dec. 31.
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