After 2024, “it’s a whole different world” when it comes to Big Law compensation, after firms this year stretched their pay spreads, increased bonus pools, moved to “black box” systems and added nonequity tiers or even created “super” tiers, among other changes aimed at luring and keeping the highest-caliber partners.

The trend of elite firms extending their pay systems “is absolutely a part of the bigger story of a rapidly evolving market, with respect to partner retention, partner recruiting, and a necessary adjustment to compensation models to accomplish both of those things,” Scott Yaccarino, a recruiter and co-founder of Empire Search Partners in New York, noted earlier this summer.