Is anyone at Weil who can confirm whether this ATL article is true regarding bonuses being linked to billable hours (https://abovethelaw.com/2020/09/weil-offers-a-new-take-on-fall-bonuses-theyre-hours-based-and-theyre-huge/)?
Keen to understand whether bonuses are paid per class year per market scale or depending on bonus.
My opinion (as a former associate) regarding why Weil structured their special 2020 bonus that way was because their bankruptcy group got killed with work that year and was pretty junior / mid level heavy.
Subject Expert
I was at Weil for a very long time. Aside from this one off issue bonuses were never tied to hours.
That was a one time thing in 2020 because of bankruptcy. They had a lottttttt of bankruptcy juniors quit. All of the bankruptcy first years and second yrs (and everyone else in bankruptcy) ended up getting $50k bonuses bc they all billed more than 2600 that year
I just left Weil recently. Weil doesn’t tie year-end bonuses to hours, nor did they tie the 2021 special bonuses to hours (both of the foregoing are just based on class year) but they did tie that specific 2020 fall bonus to hours (regardless of class year).
DM’d!
Nope.
Coach
Wait, to be clear, this is exclusively the special bonus, right?
Subject Expert
It was just that particular bonus.
Former Weil associate. Like others have said Weil doesn’t have a minimum requirement for bonuses. Like anywhere you prob won’t get away with under billing on a regular basis but it was always nice to know if you were slow outside of your control you wouldn’t be fucked on your bonus. Left for a place that wouldn’t loan me out to the BK group, now have a billable minimum. Worth it but sometimes I miss that freedom.