The Associate Pirate

Lateral Link sent out a newsletter yesterday, with some pretty interesting stats on our ATL surveys so far:

Over the last 6 weeks Lateral Link has run sixteen surveys on Above The Law, and we have received over 20,000 responses. Some of our most popular surveys focused on whether associates were making their hours, and what kind of bonuses they were receiving for their time.

Nationwide, we received over 1,500 responses to our “Is Work Slow?” survey.

• Roughly half of associates reported that work was slow, but only about 18% of respondents thought they would miss their hours.
• Patent and tax associates reported that they were particularly busy, which dovetails with the hiring needs reported by law firms nationwide.
• Real estate and structured finance associates reported that they were less busy, foreshadowing recent events at Cadwalader, Thacher Proffitt, and Sonnenschein.

We received another 6,101 responses to various surveys on billable hours and bonuses.

• Associates in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Washington, DC and the Bay Area generally reported the same lockstep compensation structure, with New Yorkers taking home higher bonuses (as well as special bonuses).
• New Yorkers were more likely to cross the 2400-hour mark, while associates in Atlanta, Houston and Boston were more likely to bill fewer than 2000 hours.
• But even when the hours are identical, roughly 94% of associates in New York said they were entitled to higher bonuses than associates elsewhere — a view disputed by about 60% of associates outside Manhattan.

If you’re curious about actual hours or bonuses at any particular firm, contact your personal search consultant or email surveys@laterallink.com to find out.

I’ve been getting a fair bit of e-mail since.

I’ll be posting some direct links to results for particular cities here over the next few days. In the short term, you can find most of the results here, and you should feel free to call for more detailed info.

I’m still working out the best way to share data on specific firms online, because it would be a bit too revealing to post that someone in the Trusts & Estates group at the New York office at Firm Y billed 1,837 hours and received a bonus of $18,002. Firm Y might react poorly to that.

But stay tuned.