When Cravath announced an increase in salary earlier this week, it was a cue for many other top legal firms to follow suit. Since then, several of these law firms have announced their own raises for associates. The most recent of these is Sidley, which comes as no surprise, given its position as the sixth largest law firm in the country, earning gross revenue of $2,922,634,000 last year.
In terms of salary structure, Sidley has followed the Cravath salary scale but introduced a significant change for senior associates. While other firms have leaned towards individualized salary structures for associates in their 9th year, Sidley has standardized these salaries. This means that all 9th-year associates get the same salary.
- Class Year 2015: $445,000
- Class Year 2016: $435,000
- Class Year 2017: $420,000
- Class Year 2018: $390,000
- Class Year 2019: $365,000
- Class Year 2020: $310,000
- Class Year 2021: $260,000
- Class Year 2022: $235,000
- Class Year 2023: $225,000
Along with the salary structure, Sidley has also announced year-end bonuses for their associates.
- Class Year 2015: $115,000
- Class Year 2016: $115,000
- Class Year 2017: $105,000
- Class Year 2018: $90,000
- Class Year 2019: $75,000
- Class Year 2020: $57,500
- Class Year 2021: $30,000
- Class Year 2022: $20,000
To add to this, the firm has also promised additional bonuses above the base amounts for those associates who have shown exceptional performance and higher productivity.
The detailed memo on this topic can be found on this link.