Biglaw is the term used in the legal industry to describe the country’s largest and most successful law firms, which are usually headquartered in major U.S. cities, such as New York, San Francisco, Chicago or Los Angeles.
The reality of working in Biglaw and securing a well-paying job is challenging and requires new associates—or early-career lawyers—to hit the ground running.
A position at a Biglaw firm is desirable since they tend to pay the market rate for a person’s services as an attorney with a starting salary of $225,000 that comes with long, demanding hours. There are many conflicting sentiments regarding Biglaw since the environment has its opportunities and challenges.
In this blog post, we explore the definition of Biglaw, how much associates get paid, how much they work, a few examples of some well-known Biglaw firms, as well the pros and cons of Biglaw culture and whether law students should be clamoring to get a Biglaw job.
The definition of Biglaw
Biglaw is the term that the legal industry uses to describe the most successful and largest law firms, and the attorneys that work there are typically called Biglaw attorneys. Some of these large law firms have more than one thousand partners and span across the United States and globe.
Not all Biglaw firms operate at this massive level, as there are many boutique law firms that count as part of Biglaw due to the prestige of the firm, equity partners or revenue they generate. Typically though, a Biglaw firm will employ over a hundred lawyers and offer the industry’s best legal wages.
Law students from the best law schools around the country clamor for an interview with the goal of becoming a summer associate on the career path of eventually making partner. In general, a summer associate’s experience with the firm may lead to a full-time, paid position as a new associate.
Biglaw firms tend to offer comprehensive legal services in corporate law practice areas, rather than focusing on a specific niche, like personal injury or criminal law. Clients are large corporations, investment vehicles, family officers or wealthy individuals. They appreciate the clout and one-stop-shop approach that these major firms provide.
The amount of responsibility and pressure that these firms espouse give rise to the understanding as to why associates tend to make very high salaries. However, with great responsibility comes a tremendous personal demand.
In the next section, we examine the average starting salary of Biglaw associates and why these firms are willing to pay so much for talent.
Biglaw associate salaries and bonuses
An associate attorney is an early-career licensed legal professional. They tend to lack hands-on experience but come from the most desirable educational backgrounds. While many in-house counsel are critical of the inexperience of a typical first-year associate, they perform tasks as grinders, which is a term used to describe the attorneys who conduct the research, writing and other support work associated with the legal practice. Ultimately, they are on track to have very successful, lucrative careers in the legal field.
As previously stated in this article, new Biglaw associates generally earn $225,000 plus bonus. If this number sounds encouraging or shocking, it is a strategy that Biglaw firms use to attract the nation’s top legal talent.
How Biglaw firms determine salaries depends on a graduate’s law school class. In general, Biglaw wages offered to new associates tend to be nearly identical since they are vying for the best and brightest up-and-comers in the industry.
The National Association of Law Placement indicates that nearly thirty percent of first-year associates earn a starting at $225,000 and move up based on the year he or she graduated. For example, a second-year associate may earn $235,000, and so on.