Milbank Tweed First-Year Bonus Remains Unchanged at $30,000
2006-12-11 15:49 (New York)


By Lindsay Fortado
     Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy
opened law-firm bonus season in New York, awarding first-year
salaried attorneys 2006 bonuses of $30,000, the same as in 2005,
on top of salary increases given earlier this year.
     Bonuses for all salaried attorneys, called associates, will
range up to $65,000, depending on experience, Milbank said in a
memo Dec. 8. Milbank is one of several New York-based law firms
that raised base pay for associates by $20,000 to $145,000 in
February, the first such increase in five years.
     ``You might've expected lower bonuses considering the
salaries, but firms had really terrific results, and the result
is that they felt that if they didn't match last year's,
somebody else might,'' said Bruce MacEwen, an economic
consultant to law firms in New York.
     Milbank, the 69th-largest U.S. law firm, according to the
National Law Journal, is the first big New York firm to announce
2006 bonuses. The New York firms that traditionally set the
standard on bonuses -- Sullivan & Cromwell; Cravath, Swaine &
Moore; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom -- haven't
announced their awards yet.
     ``We felt that our results were good enough to make us
comfortable with making our decision,'' said Mel Immergut,
Milbank's chairman. ``We didn't really focus on particularly
being the first or not, though we clearly knew that no one else
had announced, but it had more to do with our confidence.''

                            Pay Raises

     When Sullivan & Cromwell, the world's leading legal adviser
to buyers and targets in mergers and acquisitions, raised its
first-year associate salaries to $145,000 in February, many New
York firms followed suit, including Davis Polk & Wardwell,
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Milbank.
     At the time Sullivan & Cromwell said that year-end bonuses
would probably be reduced by $20,000. The firm didn't
immediately respond to a request for comment.
     ``I think that all of the firms that perceive themselves as
being in the top tier will match Milbank,'' MacEwen said.
     Associate retention rates are also an issue this year in
determining bonuses, as more young attorneys increasingly switch
jobs early in their career.
     ``Clearly all New York firms are finding that with salaries
going up in-house, with plenty of opportunities at investment
banking firms as bankers, and with a very hard year with a lot
of hard work, that retention is as much of an issue as it has
ever been,'' Immergut said.
     Milbank represents clients including JP Morgan Partners
LLC, Anheuser-Busch Cos., Astoria Financial Corp., Cushman &
Wakefield Inc., MasterCard Inc., Nascar and Tyson Foods Inc.,
according to the firm's Web site.
     Milbank is the 10th-most profitable U.S. law firm, with
profit of $1.95 million per partner on revenue of $496 million
in 2005. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is the most profitable,
with $3.79 million per partner.

--With reporting by Thom Weidlich in New York. Editor: Dunn.