In the last completed season, the BigLaw year-end bonus scale ran from $15,000 to $115,000 by class year, plus special bonuses of $6,000 to $25,000 — $21,000 to $140,000 per associate — in the memo Cravath circulated in November 2025, as the ABA Journal reported it.
The 2026 year-end amounts had not been announced as of the date this page's sources run through (October 2, 2026).
Below: the amounts by class year, the hours conditions, stub bonuses and the calendar.
Market bonus amounts by class year
On the memos this page draws on, the market year-end bonus is announced the way the salary scale is: one amount per class year, in a firm-wide memo.
The benchmark for the last completed season came from Cravath, whose November 2025 memo set year-end bonuses of $15,000 for the entering class up to $115,000 for the most senior associates on the schedule, plus special bonuses of $6,000 to $25,000 — combined totals of $21,000 to $140,000 per associate, as the ABA Journal reported the memo.
Those bonuses sit on top of base salary — a separate schedule, on a separate calendar, in separate memos.
The Cravath scale page tracks the salary steps; this one stays on the bonuses.
The full class-year table, as the ABA Journal reported the memo:
| Class year | Year-end bonus | Special bonus |
|---|---|---|
| Class of 2025 | $15k (prorated) | $6k |
| Class of 2024 | $20k | $6k |
| Class of 2023 | $30k | $10k |
| Class of 2022 | $57.5k | $15k |
| Class of 2021 | $75k | $20k |
| Class of 2020 | $90k | $25k |
| Class of 2019 | $105k | $25k |
| Class of 2018 | $115k | $25k |
The amounts depend on class year, and the ladder matters as much as the top number: each row is a class, so an associate's bonus changes as their class moves up.
Law360, as the ABA Journal reported when the memo came out, described the $15,000-to-$115,000 range as the standard BigLaw year-end bonus scale and noted it had been unchanged since 2021.
Firm memos as reported — not a government statistic
Year-end vs special bonuses
The season's headline number is really two payments.
The year-end bonus is the class-year ladder in the table above — the bonus announced in the November 2025 memo, stepping from $15,000 at the entry rung to $115,000 at the top of the published scale.
A special bonus is a separate payment on top of the year-end amount.
In the same memo, the special bonuses ran $6,000 to $25,000 — a flatter spread across the classes than the year-end ladder.
Specials also carry their own calendar.
As reported by Above the Law, Milbank announced 2026 special (summer) bonuses on July 27, 2026 — mid-year, months before any year-end memo — ranging from $6,000 for the Class of 2026 to $25,000 for the Class of 2018 and above and special counsel, with no minimum-hours condition, payable August 31, 2026.
Cahill matched on September 24, 2026.
The practical read for anyone comparing offers: do not treat "bonus" as one number.
A firm's package can carry a year-end ladder, a mid-year special, or both — each with its own amount, conditions and date.
Hours requirements for eligibility
Hours are where bonus eligibility gets firm-specific.
The clearest documented example comes from the same 2025 season: Cadwalader paid 120% of the year-end bonus to associates with at least 2,200 billable hours, as the ABA Journal reported — an above-scale tier gated on an hours count.
Hours targets also attach to pay on the salary side.
In Above the Law's 2026 scorecard of firms that matched the June 2026 raise, Norton Rose Fulbright tied its scale to 1,900 billable hours and McDermott and Quinn Emanuel to 2,000, while Milbank's memo listed no hour figure.
A firm can bind base salary, bonus, or both, to an hours target — read a memo's whole compensation section, not just the money line.
What the record does not support is any single average.
Our research found no sourced "average BigLaw associate bills X hours" figure from NALP or any other primary source, so an article that quotes one is not quoting a measurement.
The number that matters is the threshold in a given firm's own memo.
The mechanics of billable hours — what counts and how credit works — are their own topic.
Stub bonuses for first-years
The documented example of a prorated first-year bonus is Cravath's 2025 memo: the Class of 2025's year-end bonus was $15,000 as reported — prorated, per the memo — against $20,000 for the Class of 2024.
That prorated entering-class payment is what this page calls a stub bonus; our sources do not define the term, or say which other firms prorate or why.
How a firm computes the proration is not something our sources pin down.
Our research surfaced no primary or quotable survey of stub-bonus proration conventions, so no industry-standard formula is documented here.
Treat any specific stub figure as firm-specific, and take the number that counts from two documents: your offer letter and the firm's own bonus memo.
When bonuses are announced and paid
Bonus season runs on two clocks.
The mid-year clock: Milbank announced its 2026 special bonuses on July 27, 2026, payable August 31, 2026, and Cahill's match followed on September 24, 2026, as Above the Law's scorecard recorded.
The year-end clock: the last completed season opened in November 2025, when the ABA Journal reported Cravath's memo — the report that set out the $15,000-to-$115,000 scale.
That report announces amounts, not payment dates; the sources read for this page do not record when the 2025 year-end bonuses were paid.
For the current season, the honest status is open: 2026 year-end bonus amounts had not been announced as of October 2, 2026, the date this page's sources run through.
When the first year-end memo lands, other firms decide whether to match it — the same announce-and-match pattern the salary scale follows.
Firms that pay above or below market
"Market" describes alignment, not a rule: a firm is above or below it only measured against what the current memos say, and the memos differ.
On the bonus side, the documented above-benchmark example is Cadwalader's 120% tier at 2,200 billable hours, and Cahill's September 2026 match of Milbank's summer specials is the documented stay-at-benchmark move.
The base-salary side shows the same pattern of firms sitting on their own numbers rather than one published set.
Per the same legal-press scorecard, Katten's 2026 schedule topped out at $440,000 for the Class of 2019 and above, and Susman Godfrey set $240,000 for first-years — not every market-paying firm matched on the same terms.
Those are base salaries, not bonuses, and a firm's base-scale position tells you nothing certain about its bonus position, because the bonus memo is its own document.
What the record lacks matters too.
Our research found no firm-by-firm bonus table for the latest season, no quotable survey of which firms paid above or below the year-end scale, and no quotable survey of small-firm bonus formulas — so the figures on this page describe the large-firm market, not small firms.
And with the 2026 year-end amounts unannounced as of this page's source cutoff (October 2, 2026), there is no current-season above-or-below list to point to yet.
Career information, not legal advice. Bonus amounts are set firm by firm, in each firm's own memos, and change from season to season — confirm the current figures with the firm's memo or your offer letter.