Milbank’s Year-End Bonuses Bring Pressure on Big Law to Match

Big Law’s bonus season arrives with some additional intrigue this year, thanks to early moves by Milbank LLP to hand out extra payments to associates.

The Manhattan-founded firm said on Monday that it will pay associates annual bonuses ranging from $15,000 to $115,000, the same scale used by major firms last year. The announcement comes as firms have yet to match the extra $6,000 to $25,000 in special bonuses that Milbank rolled out over the summer.

The stage is now set to see what the rest of the Big Law firms do when it comes to associate bonuses. Will they match Milbank’s year-end bonus scale or will they add in extra cash to make up for special bonuses? Or might they up the total bonus money they shower on associates altogether?

“The special bonuses that happened this summer were a surprise to most,” said Ru Bhatt, a recruiter for Major, Lindsey & Africa in New York. “I expect other firms to match the bonus numbers and for the firms that are competitive with Milbank, they’re likely going to put that special bonus number into the final bonus package,” he said.

If other Big Law firms opt to bundle the special and year-end bonus totals, associates could be taking home an extra $21,000 to $140,000, based on seniority.

“Even in leaner years, associates can generally count on market bonuses as they are long-established precedent in Big Law, as most firms have already factored them into annual costs,” said Summer Eberhard, a California-based legal recruiter with Lateral Link.

Milbank “is having a record year, and we expect to be very busy through the end of the year,” Scott Edelman, the firm’s chairman, said in an internal memo announcing the year-end bonuses.

Associate hiring stalled last year after reaching record levels in 2021 and 2022.

“It was hard to find a spot for talented corporate associates because people were just not as busy in 2023—that has changed, especially in this last quarter or so,” Bhatt said. “We’ve seen a significant uptick and I expect that to continue into the new year,” he said.

Deal activity—a major source of revenue for leading firms—was down over most of 2024, with finance practices at a handful of firms the exception. Transactions work has started to ramp up again, but only in recent weeks, said Katherine Loanzon, a managing director at search firm Kinney Recruiting.

“Firms are trying to do more with less at the associate level and just maximizing the efforts from their associates because we definitely saw a much slower lateral market this year,” Loanzon said. “A lot of associates also took that as a sign and became more reluctant to make a move because this year it was more of maintaining job security because it was a slower market.”

Loanzon expects most law firms to follow with a Milbank match on year-end bonuses, but doubts there will be an increase to the year-end bonus scale. She’s also less sure about whether they will tack on extra to account for skipping the summer bonuses.

“At the end, it’s the bottom line that really matters,” she said.