After Cravath: What Happens Next in Bonusland?

[WSJ_law_blog]

Monday’s announcement over at Cravath on associate bonuses kicked off the season in which — at least in most years — law-firm associates find their paychecks just a bit fatter.

But the question on our minds: Will others follow in step with Cravath? In previous years, most firms have fallen right in line with the first mover. (Last year was an exception, though, with the lion’s share of firms giving bonuses equal to half of what Skadden paid out.)

What’s gonna happen this year? We were intrigued by this story, from Tuesday’s New York Law Journal, in which one large firm head said he was “quite honestly surprised that a major New York firm was paying bonuses this year.” So . . . will that firm, we wonder, buck the trend and give its associates nothing but a pat-on-the-back?

We can’t speak for that firm (we’ve no idea which it is), but we caught up with another chairman of a large New York firm, who concurred, saying he too was surprised that anyone was paying a bonus this year, in the darkest in recent memory. The chairman also said that not paying a bonus isn’t going to cost firms on the recruiting front at law schools. “There are plenty of good associates out there who need jobs,” he said. “That’s not the issue.”

That said, the chairman said he suspected that the “top firms” would all match the Cravath bonuses. “It’s a hard sell, because partner draws may well be down,” he said. “But a lot of us will do it.”