From redundancy rounds to big bonuses in one year

When Cravath, Swaine & Moore announced year-end bonuses of $7,000- $35,000, a host of other large law firms adopted the same bonus scale as a standard and followed almost to the dollar. The uniformity across the sector made Cahill Gordon & Reindel’s bonus plan stand out, with the firm announcing year-end bonuses of $15,000-$25,000 in addition to the midyear bonus of $2,500-$15,000 and an upcoming January bonus equal to the Cravath year-end sum. It is jarring, however, to realize that this largesse occurs less than a year after the firm’s latest redundancy round. Cahill did two rounds of layoffs in 2009 and 2010, letting go of around 60 lawyers.

From redundancy rounds to big bonuses in one year thecareerist.typepad.com Mon, Dec 20, 2010