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Salary benchmarks

Alston & Bird Salary 2026: Associate Scale, Bonus and Partner Pay

The 2026 class-year cell that is not New York lockstep is still $225,000, printed on Alston & Bird's own careers pages and labeled Los Angeles or New York. A general counsel buying Atlanta hours is not buying that card. Dated table first, then who pays it.

Match this table in-house In-house counsel recruiting
Lorenzo Sartori — Founder, Sartori & Partners — Alston & Bird salary 2026 is the $225,000 Los Angeles cell — not New York lockstep and not Atlanta pay

The 2026 Alston & Bird salary a general counsel matching Atlanta hours actually funds is not the New York lockstep: the firm’s own 2026 careers pages still print a $225,000 first-year cell labeled Los Angeles, and they say that range may not apply to other locations. Sartori & Partners is highly technical in associate search in Atlanta, with 26 closed searches over three years at a 93 percent completion rate. Across 300 structured interviews with Atlanta associates and counsel, in-house legal heads priced that printed cell as a New York card, not as Atlanta pay.

01 Start here

The printed cell is not the Atlanta paycheck.

Sartori maps about 12,000 practicing lawyers in Atlanta. The 2026 Alston & Bird salary a general counsel is actually buying is Atlanta hours, not the $225,000 first-year cell the firm's 2026 careers pages still print for Los Angeles.

$225K

Posted 2026 first-year cell on Alston’s Los Angeles entry-level Real Estate associate page, accessed 11 September 2026 — labeled specific to Los Angeles and not applicable to other locations. Alston careers ↗

Four dated dollars. Three are Alston prints labeled coastal. One is the market raise this firm has not publicly joined. The full posted grid is below.

$1.44B
2025 calendar-year gross revenue, Am Law 100 No. 44. The capital that funds the scale, not associate pay.
Daily Report citing Law.com data, 26 August 2026; Alston news page, 15 April 2026
$4.5M
2025 profits per equity partner, rank 28. An average of equity owners, not a partner salary and not an associate cell.
Daily Report citing Law.com data, 26 August 2026
2,000 hrs
Hours gate for the 2025 year-end and special bonus Alston matched on 19 December 2025.
Above the Law bonus tracker, 19 December 2025 match row
12 days
Median working days from offer to acceptance on Sartori's Atlanta associate mandate telemetry.
Sartori & Partners, Atlanta associate mandate telemetry
02 The dated table

The Alston & Bird salary cells the firm will actually print

Start with the pages that carry a dollar. Every 2026 associate range accessed on 11 September 2026 is labeled New York, Los Angeles, or both, and each says the range may not apply to other locations.

Alston & Bird’s law-student apply page, accessed 11 September 2026, lists an entry-level Real Estate associate in Los Angeles for fall 2027 at $225,000, described as the firm’s good-faith minimum and maximum for the role at the time of posting, specific to the Los Angeles office and not applicable to other locations. That is a single-cell 2026 first-year print. It is not an Atlanta scale. It is not the July 2026 New York lockstep first-year of $235,000.

The 2026 Corporate Debt associate posting for New York and Los Angeles prints $225,000–$310,000 and repeats the same location disclaimer. Those two dollars match the 2025 first-year and fourth-year bases on Biglaw Investor’s compiler grid, accessed 11 September 2026, not the July 2026 first- and fourth-year cells of $235,000 and $320,000. Mid-level postings accessed the same day still sit on the 2025 rungs: Los Angeles Labor & Employment at 3–5 years, $260,000–$365,000; IP Litigation at 3–5 years, $260,000–$365,000 printed for Los Angeles and San Francisco, with Washington, D.C. listed as a seat but not as a city to which the printed range applies; New York Investment Funds at 3–6 years, $260,000–$390,000; New York Real Estate mid-level at 4–6 years, $310,000–$390,000.

The New York Real Estate Senior Associate or Counsel posting, 6+ years, prints $365,000–$425,000, specific to New York City. On Biglaw Investor’s 2025 grid the seventh-year base is $420,000 and the eighth-year is $435,000; on the July 2026 lockstep those cells are $440,000 and $455,000. $425,000 does not appear on either ladder. A general counsel buying Atlanta hours cannot read this cell as Atlanta pay: the posting itself withholds other locations.

Alston & Bird associate bases as printed on careers pages accessed 11 September 2026. Each range is labeled specific to the office in the second column and states it may not apply to other locations. The lockstep column locates the endpoints on Biglaw Investor’s 2025 compiler grid, not as an Alston Atlanta table. Click a column header to re-rank.
Posting Office the range names Seniority Posted 2026 base 2025 lockstep map
Entry-level Real Estate Los Angeles Entry (fall 2027) $225,000 2025 1st-year base
Finance (Corporate Debt) New York and Los Angeles Associate $225,000–$310,000 2025 1st–4th year
Labor & Employment Los Angeles 3–5 years $260,000–$365,000 2025 3rd–5th year
IP Litigation Los Angeles and San Francisco (printed) 3–5 years $260,000–$365,000 2025 3rd–5th year
Investment Funds New York 3–6 years $260,000–$390,000 2025 3rd–6th year
Real Estate mid-level New York 4–6 years $310,000–$390,000 2025 4th–6th year
Real Estate Senior Associate or Counsel New York 6+ years $365,000–$425,000 Top cell is off both locksteps

Sources: Alston careers URLs accessed 11 September 2026, listed below. Biglaw Investor compiler grid, accessed the same day. No alston.com Atlanta associate page printed a dollar range.

Milbank raised associate bases $10,000 for junior classes and $20,000 for more senior classes on 2 June 2026, taking the scale from $235,000 to $455,000 effective 1 July 2026; Bloomberg Law reported the new range the same day, and Legal Business, on 3 June 2026, put the class of 2025–26 at $235,000. McDermott Will & Schulte was the first reported match that day. No Alston match announcement to this raise was located on the firm site, Above the Law, or Bloomberg Law as of 11 September 2026. That match is omitted, not inferred. The market lockstep lives on our 2026 BigLaw associate salary scale; this page owns the cells this firm has printed.

03 The office a company buys

Atlanta hours are not the coastal card

NALP's 2025 survey already told a general counsel that Atlanta is not a $225,000-median first-year city. Alston's own careers pages then withheld Atlanta from the 2026 print.

NALP’s 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey, as of 1 January 2025 and released 28 May 2025, put the overall median first-year base at $200,000 and the median in firms of 701+ lawyers at $215,000, flat against 2023. Thirty-two percent of offices reported $225,000 to first-years, 45 percent among 701+ offices. Six of 19 cities had a $225,000 median first-year: Austin, Boston, Houston, New York City, San Francisco, and the Washington, D.C. area. Atlanta is not on that six-city list. NALP’s 5 June 2025 Bulletin added an eight-market list where at least half of offices offered $225,000 — Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, New York City, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. area. Atlanta is not on that list either. The same survey’s participant tables put the 701+ eighth-year median at $375,000 as of 1 January 2025; Alston’s posted New York senior/counsel ceiling of $425,000 sits above that size-band median and still is not an Atlanta cell.

Alston’s Atlanta office page, accessed 11 September 2026, describes an office of over 350 lawyers at One Atlantic Center in Midtown. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on 5 February 2024, used the same “more than 350” band and recorded the firm’s 1893 Atlanta founding. Alston’s 20 January 2026 release said the Atlanta Business Chronicle ranked the firm No. 1 among 100 Atlanta firms by number of attorneys in Atlanta, for the sixth consecutive year. The office directory accessed 11 September 2026 lists 13 offices. The general counsel buying this platform is, in the plurality case, buying that Midtown seat.

In the same Atlanta interview cohort, 71 of 118 in-house counsel, general counsel and chief legal officer respondents over a 24-month window said they could not take Alston’s printed New York or Los Angeles cell to a compensation committee as Atlanta pay. A general counsel at a Georgia Fortune 500 specialty retailer described the printed $225,000 Los Angeles cell as a New York card with a California zip code. They price Atlanta hours against the NALP six-city list Atlanta is not on.

Where Alston's still-posted 2026 first-year cell sits among dated public prints. These are annual bases before bonus. Atlanta has no public Alston class-year table, so it is absent as a marker. Click a marker for the source.
Alston posted first-year vs July 2026 market first-year
$190k$460k

NALP overall first-year median

As of 1 January 2025, all firm sizes, 359 offices in the participant tables.

NALP, 28 May 2025 ↗

The coastal printThe Atlanta hours a company buys

  1. Printed New York or Los Angeles cell A good-faith min-max on a careers page, confined to the office it names. Useful as a coastal floor. Not a Georgia paycheck.
  2. Atlanta hours on the same platform The plurality office, the 2026 partner-class majority, and the desk a local general counsel actually retains. No public class-year table.
  3. In-house match A chief legal officer or head of legal who must price those hours against a company band, not against a location-disclaimer the board cannot take as Atlanta pay.
The 2026 match test for a hire off Alston’s printed cells, against dated public prints. Dollars live on the scale above; this table is the decision.
Against As of Matching the printed Alston cell is
July 2026 market first-year 2 June 2026 raise, effective 1 July Cheaper cash this year, if the hire is coastal and the firm has not matched
NALP six-city $225,000-median list 1 January 2025 survey Not an Atlanta median. Atlanta is absent from that list
An Atlanta Alston class-year table Not published Cannot be matched from this page
NY senior/counsel $425,000 ceiling 11 September 2026 posting A New York 6+ band, off both locksteps, not Atlanta pay
2025 PEP of $4.5 million Daily Report, 26 August 2026 Different product; not an associate salary
A New York card with a California zip code.
On the printed Los Angeles cell
04 What sits on top of base

Bonus cash, PEP, and the capital that funds the scale

Base is the printed cell. Bonus is a 2025 Cravath grid at 2,000 hours. Partner economics that are public are an Am Law average. None of those three is Atlanta associate pay.

Above the Law’s 2025 bonus tracker records Alston & Bird matching on 19 December 2025: class of 2025 at $15,000 prorated / $6,000 prorated; class of 2018 and senior at $115,000 / $25,000; 2,000 hours for both the base bonus and the special bonus; payout date undisclosed. Cravath’s own row on the same table, dated 18 November 2025, is the same two endpoints. Those cells are 2025-cycle cash bonuses by class-year endpoints and hours eligibility, not 2026 base salaries.

The prior cycle is policy, not a second grid. Above the Law, on 23 December 2024, reported Alston matching Milbank’s year-end and special bonus scales, stated a 2,000-hour threshold for base bonuses, and noted the partnership concluded that associates who qualify for a class-year bonus would also receive the special bonus. The class-year dollar grid sat in a memo image that was not transcribed, so those 2024 dollars are omitted. A head of legal at a Southeast nonprofit hospital system, in the same Atlanta cohort, put the company-side constraint in one line: the 2,000-hour bonus gate is the number they cannot replicate in-house.

Daily Report, in a 26 August 2026 feature Alston confirmed on 27 August 2026, put 2025 calendar-year gross revenue at $1.44 billion, Am Law 100 No. 44; profits per equity partner at $4.5 million, rank 28, “according to Law.com data”; and total lawyers at 960, up 15 percent since 2012, with income partners increasing more than twice as fast as equity partners. Alston’s 15 April 2026 news page confirms the No. 44 rank on 2025 revenue. Alston’s 24 March 2026 reprint of The American Lawyer recorded an eleventh consecutive year of revenue growth in 2025. PEP is equity-partner profit. It is not associate pay, and it is not a number to match for a first in-house counsel seat. Nonequity partner compensation is not public in these sources and is omitted.

Above the Law, on 23 December 2025, attributed $1,331,414,000 of 2024 gross revenue to The American Lawyer. Alston’s 15 April 2025 news page ranked the firm No. 43 among the 100 U.S. firms with the highest revenue in 2024. A 6 March 2025 Daily Report article, cited on an Alston reprint page, covered a 35 percent revenue increase over 2022–2024; the reprint does not reproduce the PEP/RPL/FTE table, so those additional 2024 line items are omitted.

Alston & Bird gross revenue across two calendar years, as attributed in dated sources. 2023 gross of $1,150,108,000 (Am Law 100 No. 46) is the prior bonus-cycle figure from Above the Law, 23 December 2024.

Above the Law, 23 December 2024 and 23 December 2025; Daily Report citing Law.com data, 26 August 2026.

Four-year lawyer headcount change by practice cluster, ending in the 2025 reporting window. Law.com data via Daily Report, 26 August 2026. Relative change, not billing rates and not class-year pay.

Daily Report reprint on alston.com, 26 August 2026, citing Law.com data.

The same 26 August 2026 Daily Report feature states that in the past four years the firm significantly grew headcount in banking and finance (up 65 percent) and corporate and business (up 24 percent) while decreasing the number of litigators by 13 percent, according to Law.com data. Growth labels are finance and corporate. Litigation still dominated the 7 January 2026 partner class. Do not read the headcount shift as a pay table.

Alston’s homepage, accessed 11 September 2026, prints $140 billion+ of value across 175+ M&A deals the firm advised on in 2025, plus 57,189 pro bono hours and 77 Chambers USA practice recognitions for 2025. Methodology — announced versus closed, role as counsel versus other — is not specified on that page. Bloomberg, on 2 January 2026, put announced M&A for U.S. targets in 2025 at $2.04 trillion, up 63 percent from 2024, with 324 deals above $1 billion against 246 in 2024. LSEG Deals Intelligence, data as of 2 January 2026, put U.S.-target announced M&A at $2.31 trillion, up 57.4 percent. Those two methodologies are not averaged here. They are the market those 175+ mandates sat inside, not Alston’s share and not associate pay.

The 2,000-hour gate is the number they cannot replicate in-house.
On the bonus gate
05 Two payers

Who earns the figure, and who writes the check

The employment contract for the 2026 class-year associate sits at the firm. The general counsel who matches it sits in Georgia Fortune 500 legal departments, hospital systems, payments companies and PE platforms — and on the panel that buys the same Atlanta hours.

NALP’s Employment for the Class of 2025 — Selected Findings, released 5 August 2026, put 60.9 percent of employed 2025 graduates into private practice, the highest share since 1990. Firms of 501+ lawyers were the single largest employer type: 33.2 percent of law-firm jobs, 6,588 jobs, about 540 fewer than the Class of 2024. Business — the NALP bucket that includes most in-house first jobs — was 6.7 percent of jobs, the lowest in 35 years on the selected-findings commentary. The 2026 Alston scale is earned at the firm. The Atlanta general counsel is a client and a later employer, not the entry payer.

Of 26 closed Atlanta associate searches over the trailing three years, Sartori’s mandate telemetry records 14 as company-side seats in which a general counsel, chief legal officer or head of legal was matching a years 3–6 hire off an Atlanta Am Law 50 platform. The remaining 12 were firm-side associate seats. That split is why this page is not a coastal lockstep memo.

The firm writes the paycheckA company matches the hours

  1. Am Law 50 payroll Class-year associates, counsel, then equity — the people on the printed coastal cells and the unpublished Atlanta rungs above them.
  2. Panel hours A general counsel who buys Georgia Band 1 healthcare, banking, litigation or real estate time, then later tries to hire the same talent in-house.
  3. In-house match A chief legal officer or head of legal at a Georgia Fortune 500, hospital system, payments company or PE-backed physician platform who must price Atlanta hours against a company band.

The 2026 class-year associate sits in a law-firm practice seat. Discovery attorneys and patent professionals are a different channel, and they are not priced on the associate postings accessed in September 2026.

  • Atlanta is the plurality office. Alston elected 22 lawyers to the partnership effective 1 January 2026, spanning seven offices and nine practice groups. Litigation & Trial Practice was the largest block. Office counts sit on the chart below; no names are carried forward.
  • Summer is a counted pipeline, not a printed weekly. Law-student FAQs, accessed 11 September 2026: a call-back of six to eight partners and associates; a summer of maximum nine weeks, mid-May to mid-July, with a minimum six weeks in the first half; practice-group specific full-time offers. The FAQ says summer pay is in line with the market and prints no dollar. 2026 summer hiring had concluded as of that check.
  • Credential gates are local. Lateral FAQs, accessed 11 September 2026: every attorney resident in an office must be a member of the Bar of that jurisdiction. The firm pays bar-prep, exam or waiver costs, plus two weeks of paid study and exam week. Georgia has not adopted the Uniform Bar Examination, per the NCBE map accessed 11 September 2026.
  • IP and discovery are not this lockstep. The IP page puts more than 145 IP lawyers, about 70 registered to practice before the USPTO, and more than 15 with PhDs. Those seats are not the $225,000 class-year product, and they are not priced on the associate postings accessed in September 2026.

The general counsel matching this table sits in the client sectors Chambers USA 2026 already names for Georgia Band 1 — healthcare, banking, commercial litigation, real estate, corporate/M&A — and in Georgia Fortune 500 legal departments.

  • Chambers USA 2026 is the panel map. Alston’s 4 June 2026 release: 84 practice rankings and 172 ranked attorneys, up from 73 practices and 153 lawyers in the 2024 release. Department pages accessed the same day confirm Georgia Band 1 Healthcare (22 years ranked), Banking & Finance (23 years), Litigation: General Commercial (23 years, 14 ranked individuals), and Real Estate (23 years). Nationwide: Financial Services Regulation: Consumer Finance (Compliance).
  • Healthcare buyers are systems, platforms and funds. Chambers USA 2026 Healthcare–Georgia names for-profit and nonprofit hospitals, physician groups, and e-health companies, with work before CMS and the FDA. Digital-health counterparties include DOJ, HHS-OIG and state regulators. The seat sits in the firm; the buyer is the hospital GC, the PE-backed physician-platform GC, or the digital-health chief legal officer. Banking & Finance–Georgia, same guide, highlights a $9 billion bridge financing for an insurance-brokerage acquisition as the work-type a bank GC actually buys; Real Estate–Georgia highlights a $55 million purchase of 55 buildings in South Downtown Atlanta for a local venture buyer.
  • Georgia Fortune 500 desks later hire this talent. Select Georgia, updated August 2025: 16 Fortune 500 companies in Georgia, 32 Fortune 1000, Atlanta ranked third among U.S. cities for Fortune 500 headquarters. RealPage Market Analytics, 17 June 2026, citing the 2026 Fortune 500, put Atlanta at 15 headquarters in that metro definition, tied with Minneapolis. Role titles, not names: EVP and General Counsel at a Fortune 25 specialty retailer; EVP and Global General Counsel at a Fortune 100 beverage company; Chief Legal Officer at a Fortune 400 payments company — all Atlanta headquarters.
  • Payments and funds sit on both sides of the table. Alston’s Payments & Fintech page, accessed 11 September 2026, describes a group of over 20 attorneys with hubs in London, Brussels and Atlanta. Investment Funds careers (New York) name PE, hedge, private credit, real estate and hybrid funds. The company-side buyer is a bank GC, a payments CLO, or PE/VC counsel.
2026 Alston partner class by office, counted from the 7 January 2026 firm release. Office counts only; no names. Atlanta is the plurality, not a pay figure.

Alston & Bird, 7 January 2026 partner-election release.

A composite from the company-side majority: a PE-backed physician platform asked us to fill a first in-house healthcare-regulatory counsel seat with a years 4–6 associate off an Atlanta Am Law 50 healthcare desk. The general counsel would fund Atlanta hours and would not fund the printed New York cell as if it applied in Midtown. We closed the search in 8 weeks, inside the 6-to-12-week envelope. The candidate who wanted the Los Angeles $225,000 cell treated as Georgia pay was not the candidate this board was buying.

Public bodies in this market are counterparties and credential feeders, not the scale employer. Healthcare and digital-health pages name CMS, FDA, DOJ, HHS-OIG and state attorneys general. Litigation pages name SEC investigations. NALP Class of 2025 recorded federal government hiring, excluding clerkships, falling 37.0 percent from nearly 1,100 to about 690 graduates. Those public seats are not paying the Alston class-year cell. They compete for a slice of the same graduating class and set the enforcement docket the firm’s Atlanta litigators and healthcare lawyers are hired to defend.

06 For the company

How a general counsel should run an Alston-scale hire

Run the hire against the table that exists: a coastal $225,000 cell with a location disclaimer, a 2,000-hour bonus gate, an unpublished Atlanta class-year table, and a Georgia bar that the Uniform Bar Examination does not shortcut.

We have worked the Atlanta associate market for 8 years, for companies in healthcare, payments, financial services, logistics and industrials, and for Atlanta-headquartered Am Law platforms. Over the trailing three years we closed 26 associate searches at a 93 percent completion rate, on a typical timeline of 6 to 12 weeks, with a median 12 working days between offer and acceptance and counter-offer incidence at 39 percent.

Five of those 14 company-side files stalled past twelve weeks because the buyer waited for an Atlanta class-year table the firm has not published. Those searches sat open while the general counsel asked for a number that is not on any public page. That is the finding that does not flatter the desk. We can price a printed coastal cell. We cannot manufacture an Atlanta lockstep the careers pages have declined to print.

In that same cohort, 48 of 94 associates at Atlanta Am Law 50 platforms over an 18-month window named the location disclaimer — not the dollar — as the reason they were testing the in-house market. Of the 12 firm-side files in the same 26, 4 needed a second shortlist after the first-choice associate used the offer window to shop a New York-printed cell against an Atlanta seat. That rate is a defense cost, not a compliment.

Georgia admission is a hard gate for the Atlanta seat the general counsel is buying. The NCBE Uniform Bar Examination map, accessed 11 September 2026, shows Georgia has not adopted the UBE. A New York-admitted associate’s UBE score does not transfer. The Georgia Office of Bar Admissions Attorneys’ Examination page, accessed the same day, describes a one-day exam of MPT plus Georgia essays, with a passing credit of at least 135 on those components toward a 270 total, and a fitness filing fee referenced at $1,200. Alston will pay bar costs on the firm side. In-house teams typically require Georgia admission on day one for courtroom and opinion work.

  1. 01 · Which product? Write coastal associate, Atlanta hours, secondment-to-hire, or years 4–6 in-house as separate briefs. If you cannot say which, you are not ready to open a search.
  2. 02 · Which print? Price against the posted $225,000 cell and its location disclaimer, not against a hoped-for $235,000 match. If the board will not fund Atlanta hours without an Atlanta table, you are waiting for a page that does not exist.
  3. 03 · Which desk? Name the file: healthcare regulatory, banking and finance, commercial litigation, real estate, corporate/M&A, payments. A generic “Alston-scale commercial lawyer” produces a shortlist for a job you do not have.
  4. → All three answered? Then run the search on the 6-to-12-week clock, put Georgia admission in the first screening call, and do not treat discovery or patent-professional seats as the class-year product.

A second composite, from the slower end of the envelope: a listed payments processor asked us to fill a mid-level finance counsel seat against the same Atlanta PQE pool that staffs the firm’s banking and payments desks. The first-choice candidate had already seen the coastal $225,000 cell and wanted it treated as Georgia pay. The file took 11 weeks, needed a second shortlist, and closed on a candidate from an Atlanta Am Law 50 platform who would disclose current cash. The unpublished Atlanta middle is not only an associate grievance. It is a company-side delay.

  • Write the office into the brief first. Atlanta hours, New York hours, or Los Angeles hours. The careers pages already split them.
  • Pull the posted cell, not a rumor. The 11 September 2026 careers pages are the 2026 dollars. The 19 December 2025 tracker is the bonus grid. Do not mix them with the July 2026 market raise.
  • Ask what the Atlanta print is. The firm does not publish it. A candidate who will not say what they earn in Midtown is not ready to be matched in-house.
  • Budget the Georgia bar as a start-date risk. Non-UBE admission, a one-day attorneys’ exam path, and a $1,200 fitness fee are dated public facts. Firm-side laterals get the bill paid. Company-side hires usually do not.
  • Treat PEP as a different product. $4.5 million average equity profit is not an associate match, and it is not an in-house counsel band. Partner-pay mechanics sit on our Am Law top-50 partner pay brief.

Google Ads Keyword Planner, measured 11 September 2026 across four countries, put 130 monthly searches on the string this page owns. That is demand for the dated number, not a reason to invent an Atlanta lockstep. Sartori & Partners maps nearly 1.5 million lawyer profiles globally, with quarterly market surveys running since 2019. The Atlanta associate findings here — the 26 closed searches, the 39 percent counter-offer rate, the 12-day window, the 14 company-side files, the five stalled Atlanta-table files — come from that program. The company-side route sits on our in-house counsel recruiting practice; the firm-side class-year work sits on associate recruiting. What a chief legal officer costs on the company side sits on our general counsel salary 2026 benchmark. US-wide lawyer pay, which this firm page does not own, sits on lawyer salary 2026.

Questions from both sides of the 2026 table

What is Alston & Bird salary in 2026 for the associate a company actually matches?

The last public 2026 first-year cell is still $225,000. It is printed on the firm’s Los Angeles entry-level Real Estate posting and as the floor of the New York/Los Angeles Corporate Debt band, both 11 September 2026. Those pages label the range specific to those offices and say it may not apply to other locations. Atlanta hours are what a general counsel is buying. They are not priced on those pages.

Has Alston & Bird matched the July 2026 $235,000 first-year raise?

No public match had been located as of 11 September 2026. Milbank moved the market lockstep to $235,000–$455,000 effective 1 July 2026; Bloomberg Law reported it on 2 June 2026. Alston’s still-live careers cells sit on the 2025 $225,000–$435,000 rungs. A hoped-for match is not a firm number and is not used here.

What bonus sits on Alston associate pay?

Alston matched the 2025 Cravath year-end and special bonus grid on 19 December 2025, with a 2,000-hour threshold for both. Class of 2025: $15,000 prorated and $6,000 prorated. Class of 2018 and senior: $115,000 and $25,000. Payout date was undisclosed. Those cells are 2025 bonus cash, not 2026 base salary.

What does Alston partner pay look like in 2026?

The public partner figure is 2025 profits per equity partner of $4.5 million, rank 28, on 960 lawyers and $1.44 billion of revenue. PEP is an average of equity-owner profit, not a W-2 and not pay for nonequity partners. Nonequity partner compensation is not public and is omitted.

Does Alston publish an Atlanta associate salary table?

Zero Atlanta associate pages printed a dollar range on 11 September 2026. Every 2026 associate range that did print is labeled New York, Los Angeles, or both, and states it may not apply to other locations. The Atlanta office page puts more than 350 lawyers at One Atlantic Center and prints no class-year dollars. This page will not invent them.

How long does an Atlanta associate search against this table take?

Typically 6 to 12 weeks, with a median 12 working days from offer to acceptance. Completion across 26 closed Atlanta associate searches over three years is 93 percent. Files that wait for an unpublished Atlanta class-year table run long.

Sources

Careers pages, Am Law economics and the Atlanta research program

Associate bases come from Alston careers pages accessed 11 September 2026. Bonus endpoints come from Above the Law's 2025 tracker. Revenue, PEP and headcount come from Daily Report citing Law.com data and from Alston's Am Law news pages. NALP supplies the Atlanta-absent first-year medians. Sartori figures come from the Atlanta associate research program.

Careers pages, Am Law economics and the Atlanta research program

41 references
  1. Sartori & Partners — Atlanta Legal Talent Research Programme (300 structured interviews; ~12,000 lawyers mapped; quarterly surveys since 2019; mandate telemetry) sartoriglobal.com ↗
  2. Apply Here | Law Students | Alston & Bird alston.com ↗
  3. Finance (Corporate Debt) - Associate | Alston & Bird alston.com ↗
  4. Labor & Employment - Associate | Alston & Bird alston.com ↗
  5. IP Litigation - Associates | Alston & Bird alston.com ↗
  6. Investment Funds - Associates | Alston & Bird alston.com ↗
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  12. Bonuses Take Flight At Southeastern Top 50 Biglaw Firm abovethelaw.com ↗
  13. Milbank, McDermott Raise Associate Salaries Up to $455,000 news.bloomberglaw.com ↗
  14. ALERT: Milbank Does It Again — Associate Salaries Are Going Up!!! abovethelaw.com ↗
  15. Milbank bumps associate pay to $235k as McDermott becomes first firm to match legalbusiness.co.uk ↗
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  24. Atlanta lawyers lead contingent of new Alston & Bird partners ajc.com ↗
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  30. Employment for the Class of 2025 — Selected Findings nalp.org ↗
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  32. Markets with the Most Fortune 500 Headquarters in 2026 realpage.com ↗
  33. Uniform Bar Examination | NCBE ncbex.org ↗
  34. Georgia Office Of Bar Admissions - Attorneys' Examination gabaradmissions.org ↗
  35. M&A in U.S. Rose to $2.04 Trillion in 2025, Highest on Record news.bloomberglaw.com ↗
  36. LSEG, United States Investment Banking Review Full Year 2025 thesource.lseg.com ↗
  37. Alston & Bird Law Firm | International Attorneys and Lawyers alston.com ↗
  38. Lateral FAQs | Alston & Bird alston.com ↗
  39. FAQs | Law Students | Alston & Bird alston.com ↗
  40. Intellectual Property Lawyers | Alston & Bird alston.com ↗
  41. Payments & Fintech Lawyers | Alston & Bird alston.com ↗

Posted associate figures are annual base salary before bonus, as printed, and are labeled specific to the office named. Alston does not publish an Atlanta class-year table, a match to the 1 July 2026 $235,000 first-year, billing rates, nonequity partner pay, summer weekly dollars, or discovery-attorney or patent-professional pay. PEP is average profit per equity partner, not a salary. The $425,000 New York senior/counsel ceiling is a posted band, not a lockstep cell. NALP medians are as of 1 January 2025. Select Georgia's 16 Fortune 500 count (August 2025) and RealPage's 15-headquarters metro count (17 June 2026) are different definitions and are not reconciled.

Our own numbers — the interview cohort, the mandate telemetry, the counter-offer incidence and the offer-to-acceptance window — come from the continuous research program described on our research page.

Related reading

Adjacent benchmarks for the same two readers

BigLaw associate salary scale 2026

The market lockstep this page is not: $235,000 first-year through $455,000 eighth-year, effective 1 July 2026. Alston's still-live cells have not joined it in public.

Read the market scale

General counsel salary 2026

What a chief legal officer and general counsel cost on the company payroll - the buyer who prices this firm's printed cell against Atlanta hours.

Read the GC benchmark

Lawyer salary 2026

US-wide lawyer pay, not this firm's scale. Live page for the national question this article does not own.

View the US benchmark

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