Lawyer Salaries

The glittering promises of the Big Law lateral market have hit a multi-million dollar roadblock with the Clifford Chance legal battle that pulls back the curtain on the closely guarded mechanics behind biglaw partnership agreements.

Clifford Chance, a lucrative biglaw firm providing rich partner rewards, is aggressively pursuing millions of dollars in compensation clawbacks from two of its former top US partners.

Just two months after stepping down, Clifford Chance’s former global managing partner, Charles Adams, delivered a financial bombshell via mail to Andrew Cone and Michael Sabin the former co-heads of the firm’s US-based funds and investment management practice.

The letters outlined a massive financial hit . . Log in to read more . .

It is May 2026, and the BigLaw salary scale has not moved for two and a half years.

That sentence would have sounded unthinkable in 2021, when Milbank ignited a comp war that pushed first-year associates from $190,000 to $215,000 in eight weeks. Three years on, Class of 2025 first-years are starting on $225,000 — the same number Milbank put on the board in November 2023. Eighth-years are still on $435,000. Cravath confirmed in its November 18, 2025 bonus memo, in writing, that base salaries would not rise in 2026.

The lockstep is intact. The escalator has stopped.

So when does it start again, we ask – and presumably you want the answer to that so we’ve done our best to pose some on-the-button questions.

Log in and check how the salary scale looks now . . .