Boies, Schiller & Flexner has moved well ahead of the law firm pack in this year’s bonus race. As reported early Wednesday by Above the Law, the litigation powerhouse will pay its associates awards averaging “over $75,000” for lawyers who’ve been with the firm for at least a year to “more than $200,000” for the “highest-performing” associates.
The scale is substantially higher than the awards announced previously by such firms as Susman Godfrey, Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart & Sullivan, and Cahill Gordon & Reindell, which all went well beyond the low bonus bar set early in the season by Cravath, Swaine & Moore.
While Cravath awarded bonuses of $7,500 to $35,000 to its associates, Cahill did better, doling out awards of $10,000 to $25,000. (Cahill also plans to pay an additional year-end bonus in January that is likely to match the rates set by Cravath and other firms.)
Late last week, Susman stepped up with its own oversized, bigger-is-better range–$45,000 to $100,000-plus. Name partner Steven Susman said the firm’s associates deserve the generous payments because they “work very hard and are very, very good.”
Boies Schiller’s healthy bonuses come at the end of what has by all indications been an impressive year for the firm. “Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP is proud of its associates’ extensive contributions to the firm’s considerable accomplishments in what was a very busy year,” partner Philip Korologos said in a statement, in which he also underscored the firm’s “leading-level associate salaries.”
While the year has seen some (out of the ordinary) negative press–see here and here–for the House of David (Boies), those dings have done little to diminish the successes of 2010.
There was, for instance, Boies’s big win for Oracle in the software giant’s copyright fight against German rival SAP–Oracle was awarded $1.3 billion in damages. Then came the ruling by a Los Angeles judge tossing out a marital property agreement that could have given sole ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers to Frank McCourt while denying a piece of the team to his ex-wife–and Boies client–Jamie McCourt. In an effort not driven by fees and billables, Boies also teamed up with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Theodore Olson in a high-profile challenge to California’s antigay ballot initiative.
The most recent Am Law 100 financial data shows that Boies, Schiller & Flexner brought in gross revenue of $296 million in 2009, a 0.3 percent increase from the prior year. Revenue per lawyer at the 240-lawyer firm increased 4.7 percent in 2009, to $1.35 million.
