This Top 50 Biglaw Firm Clearly Matches Year-End And Special Bonuses For Associates

Businessman inside bank vault lying in dollar cashWoo-hoo! Biglaw bonus season is officially in full swing, with Biglaw firms announcing their bonus schedules at a rapid clip. We can now report that Cleary Gottlieb, ranked 36th on the Am Law 100 with $1,491,568,000 in gross revenue in 2023, has let associates at the firm know they’ll be paid the top of the market compensation.

The following scale is what the firm announced today:

Screenshot 2024-11-21 at 12.08.42 PM

As you can see, it’s a match of the Milbank scale — both the traditional annual ones and the special bonuses Milbank gave out back in the summer. The bonuses will be paid out on December 20th.

So is your firm matching *both* the year-end and special bonuses? Let Above the Law know! We depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when your firm matches (or if they fail to do so), please text us (646-820-8477) or email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Matches”). Please include the memo if available. You can take a photo of the memo and send it via text or email if you don’t want to forward the original PDF or Word file.

And if you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Bonus Alerts (which is the alert list we also use for salary announcements), please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the bonus alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each bonus announcement that we publish. Thanks for all of your help!

Read the full memo below.

2024 Bonus and 2025 Salary Memorandum – Associates on the U S Salary Scale


Kathryn Rubino HeadshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].


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