Salary benchmarks
Clerkship Bonus 2026: How Many Checks Fund One Class
A lockstep firm of more than 1,000 lawyers averaged 15 post-clerkship hires in 2025. Each hire collects a published 2026 signing check of $125,000 to $180,000. The court does not write it. The general counsel funds it in fees.
Fifteen 2026 clerkship bonus checks fund one incoming class.
Sartori maps roughly 67,000 lawyers in New York. NALP’s May 2026 survey is the only dated class-count series that lets a general counsel size the checkbook; the dated firm table below is what each of those checks actually says.
NALP’s May 2026 survey put firm-wide post-clerkship hiring at 8.0 direct-to-clerkship plus 6.8 practice-then-clerk at firms of more than 1,000 lawyers, from 10 firm-wide submissions covering calendar 2025. Budget a class, not a hire.
The dated table is the unit price. The class count is the quantity. Multiply them and you have the 2026 checkbook. The arithmetic sits in the next section.
- 3,547
- Judicial clerkships taken by the Class of 2024 — 10.0 percent of 35,335 employed graduates, tables prepared July 2025.
- NALP Class of 2024 National Summary Report, July 2025
- 1,309
- Federal clerkships inside that 3,547, at a full-time long-term median of $76,000 — the pipeline that later collects a firm signing check.
- NALP Class of 2024 National Summary Report, July 2025
- 209 + 130
- Direct-to-clerkship and practice-then-clerkship associates hired in calendar 2025 at 308 reporting offices.
- NALP Bulletin+, May 2026
- 8.0 + 6.8
- Firm-wide average post-clerkship hires at firms of more than 1,000 lawyers (n=10 firm-wide submissions) — the 15-check class.
- NALP Bulletin+, May 2026
We have worked the New York associate market for more than 10 years, for law firms and for companies that buy the advocacy those clerks later deliver. Over the trailing three years we closed 33 associate searches at a 93 percent completion rate, on a typical timeline of 6 to 12 weeks. The 2026 clerkship bonus is the signing figure on the post-chambers seats inside that book — a class-cost, not a one-off perk.
| Firm | One year | Two years | Eligibility / gate | Source type | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cravath, Swaine & Moore | $125,000 | $150,000 | Qualifying clerkship; Supreme Court additional bonus unpublished | Firm How to Apply / FAQ | Accessed 11 Sept 2026 |
| Munger, Tolles & Olson | $125,000 | $150,000 | State supreme, federal district or appellate; nets a prior employer | Firm judicial-clerks page | Effective 1 July 2025 |
| Paul, Weiss | $125,000 | $150,000 | Judicial clerks; Chancery preferable on Wilmington litigation seats | Firm laterals & clerks page | Accessed 11 Sept 2026 |
| Latham & Watkins | $125,000 | $150,000 | Qualifying clerkship plus extra Supreme Court bonus; dollars are press, not the careers PDF | Above the Law | 21 July 2025 |
| Boies Schiller Flexner | $150,000 | $175,000 | Federal district and appellate clerks | Firm careers overview | Accessed 11 Sept 2026 |
| Yetter Coleman | $145,000 | Not published | Federal and state court clerkships | Above the Law | 17 June 2026 |
| Quinn Emanuel | $175,000 | $200,000 | Article III federal clerks; $25,000 add-on for a second qualifying clerkship | Firm U.S. compensation page | Accessed 11 Sept 2026 |
| Hueston Hennigan | $180,000 | Not on the careers page | Federal district or appellate; ~70% of associates clerked | Firm lawyers page | Accessed 11 Sept 2026 |
| Susman Godfrey | $180,000 | $200,000 | Article III district or appellate required of every incoming associate; $25,000 advance; no double-pay | Firm associate-hiring page | Restated 25 March 2026 |
The court pays the clerk. The firm writes the bonus. The general counsel funds it in fees.
One incoming class is a fifteen-check invoice.
NALP measured the hires. Named firms published the unit price. The product is arithmetic, and it is the number a general counsel actually funds.
NALP’s May 2026 Bulletin+ report, “U.S. Law Firm Lateral Hiring Shows Broad Growth in 2025,” is the only dated class-count series in the file. Direct-to-clerkship hiring at the 308 reporting offices was up 17.2 percent against 2024; practice-then-clerkship hiring was up 4.8 percent. The overall average across that pool is 0.7 plus 0.4 hires per office, and the medians are 0.0 — most offices hired none, which is why the firm-wide average at the large end, not the per-office mean, is the figure that sizes a real class.
Ten firm-wide submissions produce 14.8 hires, which this page treats as fifteen checks. Fifteen is not a census of every United States firm and not a New York-only count; it is the respondent-pool average at the lockstep end of the market, and it is the quantity a general counsel should put against the unit prices in the table above.
The supply behind those fifteen hires is a graduating-class flow, not a stock of sitting clerks. NALP’s Class of 2024 National Summary, tables prepared July 2025 with employment status as of 17 March 2025, recorded 223 more clerkship jobs than the Class of 2023 and a 0.4 percentage-point fall in share to 10.0 percent. Private practice took 20,810 of 35,335 employed graduates. State clerkships were 1,985 (56.0 percent, median $63,950); local were 240 (6.8 percent, median $60,000). Only 0.1 percent of clerkships were part-time; 1.9 percent were short-term. OSCAR or a clerkship application process accounted for 1,147 jobs, 4.1 percent of those reporting a source. The federal median on 1,107 salary reports was $76,000.
A boutique that requires an Article III clerkship of every incoming associate does not get to use the 15-hire average as a comfort. Susman Godfrey’s associate-hiring page, accessed 11 September 2026 and restated in firm news dated 25 March 2026, makes the gate explicit: every incoming associate must have completed a federal judicial clerkship for an Article III district or appellate judge. On that desk the signing check is a class-wide cost. The 15-hire average is the lockstep-firm unit; the 100 percent gate is the boutique unit. A general counsel who uses both kinds of firm is funding both kinds of invoice.
Jones Day’s Supreme Court classes are a third unit, and they are small, expensive, and disclosed as headcount rather than as dollars. Firm news dated 30 March 2026 announced four former United States Supreme Court clerks from the October 2024 Term joining Issues & Appeals as associates, and restated a stock of 100 such hires since October Term 2011. Above the Law, 11 December 2024, reported a ten-clerk Jones Day class; if each were paid at the $450,000 figure that piece called “reportedly,” the product would be $4,500,000. The four-clerk 2026 class, if still at the January 2024 Gibson-quoted $500,000, would be $2,000,000. Both products put legal-press dollars on firm-disclosed headcount. They are not a 2026 firm PDF, and they are not a substitute for the $125,000–$180,000 Article III band that actually prints on careers pages.
Who writes the check is not who funds the work.
Three treasuries sit on this figure: the court, the partnership, and the company that buys the advocacy. Only one of them prints a 2026 clerkship scale.
Court payrollCompany fees
- Chambers The hiring judge is the appointing authority. The Judiciary Salary Plan pays the term. No signing bonus lives here.
- Firm partnership The incoming-associate offer carries the 2026 signing check. This is the only desk that publishes the dollar.
- General counsel The company buys the advocacy those clerks later deliver. It funds the check through fees, not through its own bonus grid.
During the term, the United States Courts pay the clerk. OSCAR’s qualifications, salary and benefits page — updated 26 April 2023 and still the live page as accessed on 11 September 2026 — puts term clerks on the Judiciary Salary Plan, generally for one or two years, and keeps them out of the federal retirement and Thrift Savings Plan systems unless they arrive without a break from another federal post. After the term, Cravath, Susman, Quinn, Hueston, Munger Tolles, Boies Schiller and Paul, Weiss all state the bonus as a payment to the incoming associate. Two of those firms refuse to double-pay: Munger Tolles nets any clerkship bonus already received from the firm or from another employer; Susman will not pay an additional bonus for clerkships already bonused by a different law firm. A $25,000 advance at offer, which Susman will make, is still firm money.
The commercial buyer sits one step further out. Jones Day’s judicial-clerks page names BTI Consulting Group rankings “based on survey results from Fortune 1000 corporate counsel” as the proof of who consumes the advocacy. Gibson Dunn’s clerks page puts former clerks into high-stakes litigation and into transactional matters for Fortune 500 companies. A general counsel at a Fortune 100 financial-services company, in Sartori’s New York work, put the same structure in one sentence: the firm writes the clerkship check; her department funds it as a line in the outside-counsel budget when the firm staffs her appellate matters with former clerks. The court pays the clerk. The firm writes the bonus. The general counsel funds it in fees. She does not carry a clerkship-bonus grid on her own payroll. No 2026 company legal-department careers page published one.
Sartori’s quarterly survey since 2019 finds that 14 of 22 New York general counsel who buy appellate and trial work from lockstep firms, across the four waves from the third quarter of 2025 through the second quarter of 2026, treated former-clerk staffing as a quality signal they will pay for in fees, not a signing bonus they will put on their own payroll. That is a survey read, not a second interview count. The capital that funds the firm side of the same transaction is the 2025 partnership year: Above the Law, 15 April 2026, restating the 2026 Am Law 100, put Kirkland & Ellis at $10.556 billion gross, Latham & Watkins at $8.300 billion, and Gibson Dunn at $4.211 billion. Susman Godfrey posted $2.876 million revenue per lawyer on 226 lawyers; Quinn Emanuel posted $2.453 million revenue per lawyer and $9.545 million profits per equity partner. Sixty-two firms cleared $1 billion. Those 2025 results are the pool from which 2026 signing checks are written.
| The seat | Who pays the person | 2026 signing bonus | What happens next |
|---|---|---|---|
| Associate, Issues & Appeals | Am Law / global firm partnership | Yes, on the published 2026 schedule | Fortune 1000 appellate and trial work billed to the general counsel |
| Associate, commercial trial boutique | Boutique partnership | Yes, often above lockstep; sometimes a 100% clerk gate | Depositions, motions, trial — client is still the company |
| New Lawyers Group associate | Global firm partnership | Yes, then rotation into litigation, M&A, tax, government regulation or IP | Practice lock-in after the rotation |
| Honors trial / appellate attorney or AUSA | United States (executive branch) | No clerkship-bonus scale published | Clerkship can preserve Honors eligibility; some 2026–2027 AUSA seats require one already in hand |
| Bristow Fellow, Office of the Solicitor General | United States (GS-12) | No | Usually four seats a year; cannot lead directly into an OSG Attorney Assistant post |
| In-house counsel, first post-chambers seat | Company payroll | No 2026 dollar published on company pages | The firm bonus is typically already earned, or netted, before this payroll starts |
The check lands when you start as an incoming associate, not while you sit in chambers, and not when you later join a company.
- Read the netting rule first. Munger Tolles subtracts a prior employer’s payment. Susman will not add a second check on clerkships another firm already bonused.
- Price the second year on the schedule. The kicker is published at Cravath, Quinn, Susman, Boies Schiller, Munger Tolles and Paul, Weiss. It is not a handshake.
- Do not budget a 2026 Supreme Court extra. Firms confirm it exists. Accessed 2026 pages do not print it. The last attributed ceiling is January 2024.
- Honors is a real fork. Over 180 openings for 2026–2027, and no firm signing check on the other side of it.
- The search-firm channel is closed. Jones Day and WilmerHale state they do not accept judicial-clerk resumes from search firms. The documented path is the employer portal.
If you are the general counsel, you are not writing this check on your payroll. The general counsel funds the check through fees, not through a company bonus grid.
- Budget a class, not a hire. Fifteen checks at the lockstep end; 100 percent of the class at a clerk-mandatory boutique.
- Ask which gate the firm actually runs. A plus-factor clerkship and a required Article III clerkship produce different invoices.
- Watch stacking against your start date. A second-year kicker is a firm cost. A slipped start date is a staffing cost you feel in the matter.
- Do not expect an in-house replica. No 2026 company page priced a chambers-to-payroll signing scale. Buying the credential in-house is a different product.
- The 2025 profit pool is what funds 2026 checks. Kirkland at $10.556 billion and Latham at $8.300 billion, as restated on 15 April 2026, are the capital cycle, not a bonus line-item.
The general counsel funds the check through fees, not through a company bonus grid.
The court salary is not even close to the signing check.
A New York term clerk on JSP-11 step 1 earns $88,005 from 12 January 2026. The firm signing check for one Article III year is a multiple of that year, paid after the term ends.
The Administrative Office of the United States Courts posted Judiciary Salary Plan tables effective 12 January 2026; the hub was updated 29 December 2025. New York-Newark, with a 37.95 percent locality payment, puts JSP-11 step 1 at $88,005, JSP-12 step 1 at $105,481, JSP-13 step 1 at $125,431, and JSP-14 step 1 at $148,222. Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, at 33.94 percent locality, puts JSP-11 step 1 at $85,447. OSCAR sets the grade: JSP-11 step 1 for law-school graduates with academic excellence and no post-graduate legal work; JSP-12 with one or more years plus bar membership; JSP-13 with two or more years plus bar; JSP-14, one per chambers under Judicial Conference policy, with three years’ post-graduate work including at least two as a federal clerk, staff attorney, pro se, death-penalty or BAP clerk (or one of those years as a Supreme Court Fellow).
NALP’s Class of 2024 federal-clerkship median of $76,000 sits below the 2026 New York JSP-11 step-1 rate because it is a national first-job median on 2024 employment, not a 2026 New York locality table. Either figure is the court paycheck. Neither is the firm signing check. Cravath’s $125,000 one-year bonus is 1.4 times the New York JSP-11 step-1 rate; Susman’s $180,000 is 2.0 times that rate. Vanderbilt’s 26 August 2026 summary of George, Yoon and Gulati puts the same comparison in the stacking paper’s language: with firms offering bonuses worth more than $100,000, the opportunity cost of stacking has declined.
NY JSP-11 step 1
Judiciary Salary Plan, New York-Newark, effective 12 January 2026.
AOUSC JSP table NY ↗The chambers inventory that later becomes the bonus-eligible flow is term clerks, not career clerks. OSCAR’s undated “Job Categories LAW DEGREE REQUIRED OR PREFERRED” breakdown counts 3,505 term law clerks, 1,570 career law clerks and 55 temporary law clerks, 5,130 chambers positions in total. Term appointments are generally one to two years. Separately, the Annual Report on the Judiciary Workplace 2024 records fiscal 2024 actual FTEs of 1,428 Article III judges (active and senior), 5,937 judges’ chambers staff, and a judiciary workforce of 30,134. The fiscal 2026 Congressional Budget Summary requested an increase of $26.5 million for chambers staff associated with additional judges — 68 FTE for active Article III judges, 90 FTE for senior judges, and 50 FTE for bankruptcy judges. Authorized seats are not the same as the annual flow that later collects a firm check.
What a SCOTUS clerkship bonus and a later move actually change.
A move after chambers changes who pays. It does not usually mint a second signing check, and it does not move the unpublished Supreme Court extra onto a 2026 PDF.
Credential is earnedPayer changes
- Stay for the firm start The partnership writes the published 2026 check. Credit for clerked time, capped at two years at Cravath and Quinn, slots the associate on the lockstep ladder.
- Stack a second term The kicker is on the schedule. The start date slips a year. First-time applicants lose a seat the judges now treat as already spoken for.
- Leave the firm path Honors, an AUSA seat, a Bristow year, a state-AG honors class, or an in-house desk: the payer changes and the 2026 firm scale does not follow.
Stacking is the move that keeps the clerk on the bonus path and raises the price. Vanderbilt Law School, on 26 August 2026, summarizing George, Yoon and Gulati, “Stacking the Deck” (forthcoming George Washington Law Review Arguendo), reports interviews with roughly 130 judges. OSCAR mass applications, grade inflation, and weak writing-sample signals lead judges to treat a prior clerkship — even one not yet served — as a forward-looking hiring signal. Plan-compliant late hiring generates the gaps that subsequent clerkships then fill. Requiring prior clerkship experience, the authors argue, effectively halves the available slots for first-time applicants. Above the Law’s 18 June 2026 coverage of the same paper cites interviews with 146 sitting federal judges and the second-year kickers at Susman, Quinn, Hueston and Boies. Those interview counts are anecdote about judicial behavior, not an Administrative Office cut in authorized chambers.
The public-body fork pays no 2026 firm bonus and is open again. The Attorney General’s Honors Program, eligibility page updated 27 August 2026, took applications from 28 August to 8 September 2026 for entry on duty in calendar 2027, with over 180 openings. A full-time clerkship of generally twelve months or more, begun within nine months of the J.D., is an eligibility-preserving activity; part-time clerkships are not; permanent private-firm employment after graduation is not. Delayed clerkships starting one to three years after graduation may apply only to time-limited Honors seats that finish before the clerkship starts. Participating-components figures updated 25 August 2026 include Civil Division 32 (Appellate Staff 3, Federal Programs 6), Antitrust 22, Energy and Natural Resources 15, and 42 estimated U.S. Attorney’s Office seats. District of Arizona (2) and Northern District of Texas (2) will look only at applicants who have a J.D. and are serving in, have completed, or will soon begin a judicial clerkship.
The Office of the Solicitor General, page updated 27 July 2026, staffs four Deputies, 16 Attorney Assistants, four one-year Bristow Fellows, and up to two Phillips Fellows. Bristow Fellows typically come after a one-year federal appellate clerkship, are paid GS-12, and cannot convert directly into an OSG Attorney Assistant post. California’s Attorney General Honors Program for the 2027 class, deadline 20 October 2026, is open to judicial clerks who will finish in September 2027, with a two-year commitment in Sacramento, San Francisco, San Diego, Oakland and/or Los Angeles, and no published clerkship-bonus scale. Federal defender organizations — 83 of them, plus about 13,000 CJA panel attorneys — run a non-capital fellowship of 12 two-year seats on JSP-11 to JSP-13. An Assistant Federal Public Defender – Appeals announcement for the District of Puerto Rico (2026-01) called a federal judicial clerkship, especially appellate, desirable, and paid on the judiciary salary scale for AFPDs.
The in-house fork is the one a chief legal officer actually controls, and it does not reprint the firm scale. Gibson Dunn and Jones Day sell clerks into Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 work; that is fee-side demand, not a company signing grid. A move from the firm desk to the company desk typically happens after the bonus has already been paid, or after a netting rule has already extinguished it. A chief legal officer who wants the credential on payroll is hiring a former clerk as in-house counsel, not matching Cravath’s $125,000. We did not find a 2026 dollar for that hire on any company page, so this page does not invent one.
Who arrives in the pipeline is not a random draw. NALP’s Jobs & JDs Class of 2024 media release, 22 October 2025, recorded that graduates of color were 33.7 percent of the class and obtained 27.1 percent of all clerkships; Latinx graduates were 11.8 percent of the class and 7.3 percent of federal clerkships. Continuing-generation J.D. students (at least one lawyer parent) were 14.2 percent of the class and obtained 20.7 percent of federal clerkships; first-generation college students were 21.0 percent of the class and 12.6 percent of federal clerkships. Employed continuing-generation J.D. students took clerkships at 12.5 percent against 8.4 percent of first-generation college students. The stacking paper’s judge interviews add a qualitative cut the statistics do not: first-generation candidates are the ones some judges say the bonus “does not compensate.” That last clause is interview, not a filing series.
Three clocks, not one compensation memo, produced the 2026 jump.
A hiring freeze pushed talent toward courts and firms. OSCAR’s June calendar manufactures the gaps that stacking then prices. 2025 profits and a 1 July 2026 base reset gave bonus-paying firms the cash and the cycle to move.
The first clock is executive-branch demand falling away, then returning. The presidential memorandum “Hiring Freeze,” 20 January 2025, published 28 January 2025 at 90 FR 8247, barred filling vacant federal civilian positions as of noon on 20 January 2025. It applies to executive departments and agencies. It does not, on its face, name Article III clerkships. Yale Journal on Regulation Notice & Comment recorded the Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management email that followed: “Pursuant to the hiring freeze announced January 20, 2025, your job offer has been revoked.” NALP’s May 2026 survey states that 3L recruiting by responding offices rose from 14 percent in 2024 to 22 percent in 2025 and names “the rescission of Honors Program and other agency offers by the federal government in early 2025” as one factor. A cohort that had already chosen government was thrown onto the 2025 private-practice and clerkship markets. The 2026–2027 Honors cycle is open again; the bonus-paying firms kept the people who did not wait.
The second clock is the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan, updated 16 December 2025. For students who entered law school in 2024: no applications or recommendations before 12:00 p.m. EDT Monday 8 June 2026; no applicant contact before Tuesday 9 June; no interviews or offers before Wednesday 10 June 2026; offers held open at least 24 hours. Parallel June dates run in 2027 and 2028. The dates do not apply to law-school graduates; judges can hire graduates off-plan. OSCAR access for the Class of 2027 opened 20 January 2026. Plan-compliant judges hire 3Ls for terms one to three years out. Those gaps are the inventory stacking fills, and they are the inventory the $20,000–$25,000 second-clerkship kickers then price. Off-plan hiring splits the pool rather than enlarging it.
Judicial Conference proceedings of 10 March 2026 retied a moratorium on filling vacated over-formula pro se and death-penalty law-clerk posts to the effective date of new formulas, now expected in fiscal 2029 at the earliest, and approved Track III court-law-clerk allocations for fiscal 2026 through 2027. Those are staff-side seats, not elbow-clerk terms, but they are one more graduate-absorbing outlet on hold. Demand on the chambers that remain is not flat. Judicial Business 2025, year ending 30 September 2025, recorded regional courts of appeals filings of 41,824 (up 5 percent), district combined filings of 382,692 (up 6 percent), criminal defendants of 79,129 (up 13 percent), immigration-violation defendants of 32,393 (up 27 percent, 82 percent of them in southwestern border districts), and bankruptcy petitions of 557,376 (up 11 percent). The Federal Bar Association’s March 2026 government-relations update put district-court vacancies at 36 as of 18 March 2026, with 15 judicial vacancy emergencies, nine of them in Texas, and H.R. 1702 (the JUDGES Act) stalled after a 5 March 2025 House Judiciary markup. Each unfilled district judgeship is a missing chambers. Caseload and vacancies change how many bonus-eligible clerks the system mints. They do not print the dollar on the firm check.
The third clock is capital plus the lockstep cycle. Above the Law, 2 June 2026, reported Milbank raises of $10,000 to $20,000 by class year, effective 1 July 2026. The class-year ladder itself belongs to the 2026 BigLaw associate salary scale; what belongs here is the coincidence. Reuters, 10 June 2026, reported Susman setting 2026 bases $5,000 to $10,000 above that reset, effective 1 July, and noted that lawyer compensation and investments in technologies such as AI had buoyed expenses alongside strong 2025 results. Do not read that sentence as a published headcount cut from AI; none is sourced. Yetter Coleman, as reported by Above the Law on 17 June 2026, matched the Milbank scale and raised its judicial clerkship bonus to $145,000, applying it to federal and state court clerkships. Base and signing schedules moved in the same quarter. Incoming clerks collect both.
A separate political shock tried to cut the government-move path off from a clerk-mandatory firm and then failed. Executive Order 14263, “Addressing Risks from Susman Godfrey,” signed 9 April 2025 and published 15 April 2025 at 90 FR 15615, directed agency officials to refrain from hiring employees of that firm absent a waiver, and to limit building access and official engagement. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia permanently enjoined enforcement on 27 June 2025; the Department of Justice dismissed the consolidated appeals on 2 March 2026, as reported by The Texas Lawbook that day. The firm restated its $180,000 / $200,000 clerkship schedule in March 2026, after the injunction. Government laterals from that all-clerk alumni pool are legally open again. For a general counsel who uses the firm, the relevant fact is not the caption. It is that a desk which already funds a signing check on every incoming associate also recovered the public-body off-ramp that competes with that check.
Budget the class. Do not assume the envelope will hold a stacked start.
Sartori’s New York associate desk is a thirty-three-file book, not a census of the 2026 bonus market. The files that slipped did so for a reason this page can name.
In that same New York interview cohort, 71 of 118 litigation and issues-and-appeals hiring partners over a 24-month window named the post-clerkship signing check as a class-cost they budget in the recruiting year rather than a one-off perk. A hiring partner at an Am Law 50 litigation group told us they will not open an incoming associate class without budgeting a signing check for every Article III clerk they expect to land. That is the firm-side read. The company-side read, from the same cohort, is the general counsel who already said the quiet part: she funds it in fees.
Of 33 closed New York associate searches over three years, 11 were post-clerkship litigation or appellate seats. Ten of those 11 completed. Counter-offers arrived on 4 of the 11, in line with the 37 percent New York associate-line rate, and the median offer-to-acceptance window on the line is 11 working days. The typical timeline is 6 to 12 weeks. Three of the 10 completed post-clerkship files saw the accepted start date slip more than a quarter because the candidate stacked a second clerkship after the offer — a delay that envelope does not absorb. One of the 11 did not complete: the candidate took a Department of Justice Honors seat. We cannot outbid Honors with a search process, and we cannot make a stacked start date fit a 12-week fill. Those two facts are the ones that cut against the easy story.
Two composites, numbers inside the same envelope. An Am Law 50 litigation group in New York asked us to fill four post-clerkship associate seats feeding issues-and-appeals-adjacent trial work. Offers went in eight weeks. The class was budgeted at four times the lockstep one-year check. One of the four accepted and then stacked a second clerkship; the start slipped into the next fiscal year, and the client who had been told the seat would be staffed in the current budget cycle was the one who felt it. A clerk-mandatory trial boutique ran a six-associate incoming class, every seat carrying the $180,000 check. A Fortune 500 chief legal officer who uses that boutique on commercial trials asked why the staffing mix had become more expensive year on year. The honest answer was that 100 percent of the class now carries a signing check the partnership funds from the same revenue that bills her.
What our own files cannot see is the unpublished Supreme Court extra. Mandate telemetry records the Article III band that prints on careers pages. It does not record a 2026 Gibson or Jones Day Supreme Court dollar, because those firms have not put one on a 2026 PDF we can open. A page that pretended otherwise would be more useful and less true. Coverage of the New York market is not the same as a price we have not been shown.
The hiring path for this credential is the employer portal. Jones Day: “We do not accept judicial clerk resumes from search firms.” WilmerHale states the same for judicial-clerk and entry-level resumes. Keker’s Fall 2026 packet asks for at least three references including the sitting judge. Covington limits the bonus to clerks of a federal judge or the highest court in any state or the District of Columbia, with extras for the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court. Those are firm gates, not in-house gates. A company that wants the same people later is buying them after the bonus has already been paid, or it is competing with Honors and with stacking for a start date it does not control.
WilmerHale says approximately one-third of recent incoming classes came after one or more judicial clerkships. Keker says 90 percent of its attorneys clerked. Munger Tolles says 80 percent of litigators clerked and 64 percent of lawyers clerked in the United States Courts of Appeals. Hueston Hennigan says nearly 70 percent of associates clerked in federal district or appellate courts. Boies Schiller says over 40 percent of its lawyers have completed clerkships. Paul, Weiss states a stock of 10 former Supreme Court clerks and more than 80 former federal courts of appeals clerks. Those densities tell a general counsel which desks will invoice a class-cost and which will invoice a minority line. They are firm-stated shares, not a third-party census, and they are how the 2026 figure shows up in the matters you actually buy.
The service view of the New York associate book, with the brief-to-close process, sits on our New York associate recruiting page. The lockstep base that clerks step onto after the signing check is the 2026 BigLaw associate salary scale; year-end and special bonuses as one combined table live on BigLaw bonus 2026. Companies that want the credential on their own payroll, rather than through a firm’s incoming class, should start the conversation as a search for in-house counsel, not as a replica of this scale. We will say so on the first call.
Common questions about the 2026 clerkship signing check
What is a clerkship bonus in 2026?
A one-time firm signing payment of $125,000 to $180,000 for one qualifying Article III year. Cravath, Munger Tolles and Paul, Weiss publish $125,000; Quinn Emanuel publishes $175,000; Susman Godfrey and Hueston Hennigan publish $180,000. The United States Courts pay the sitting clerk on the Judiciary Salary Plan — $88,005 at JSP-11 step 1 in New York-Newark from 12 January 2026 — and do not write the signing check. No 2026 company careers page priced the same figure for a direct chambers-to-in-house hire.
How many of those signing checks does a 1,001-lawyer firm fund for one class?
NALP’s May 2026 survey put the firm-wide average at 15 post-clerkship hires at firms of more than 1,000 lawyers. That is 8.0 associates who went law-school-to-clerkship-to-firm and 6.8 who practiced, clerked, and returned, from 10 firm-wide submissions covering calendar 2025. Fifteen checks at Cravath’s $125,000 one-year rate is $1,875,000; fifteen at Susman’s $180,000 rate is $2,700,000. Those products are arithmetic from NALP’s average times a named firm’s published bonus, not a NALP or Administrative Office total. A boutique that requires an Article III clerkship of every incoming associate funds a check on 100 percent of that class, not on a 15-hire average.
Who pays a federal clerkship bonus — the court, the firm, or the general counsel?
The hiring law firm pays it; the United States Courts pay the sitting clerk’s JSP salary, not the bonus. Cravath, Susman, Quinn, Hueston, Munger Tolles, Boies Schiller and Paul, Weiss all state the figure on a 2026 careers page as a payment to an incoming associate. A Fortune 100 general counsel in Sartori’s New York work described the same dollars as a line in the outside-counsel budget when the firm staffs her appellate matters with former clerks — fees, not her payroll. Jones Day’s judicial-clerks page names Fortune 1000 corporate counsel, via BTI survey rankings, as the commercial buyer of that advocacy.
How much is a SCOTUS clerkship bonus?
No 2026 firm PDF we opened publishes a Supreme Court dollar; a Gibson Dunn spokeswoman put it at $500,000 in January 2024. Above the Law, 26 January 2024, is the restatement of that quote. A 10-clerk Jones Day class in December 2024 was “reportedly” paid $450,000, again legal-press rather than a firm disclosure. Jones Day’s 30 March 2026 announcement added four October Term 2024 clerks to Issues & Appeals and restated a stock of 100 such hires since October Term 2011, without a 2026 dollar. Cravath, Latham, Susman, Quinn, Munger Tolles and Covington all confirm an extra Supreme Court overlay; none of those pages print the extra amount.
Does a second judicial clerkship increase the 2026 figure?
Yes: Cravath pays $150,000 in lieu of $125,000 for two years; Quinn adds $25,000; Susman pays $200,000 rather than $180,000. Boies Schiller moves from $150,000 to $175,000; Munger Tolles and Paul, Weiss match Cravath’s two-year step. Vanderbilt Law School’s 26 August 2026 summary of George, Yoon & Gulati, “Stacking the Deck,” treats bonuses worth more than $100,000 as the reason the opportunity cost of stacking has fallen. The same paper, drawing on interviews with roughly 130 judges, argues that requiring a prior clerkship as a hiring signal effectively halves first-time seats. That is a structural claim from judge interviews, not an Administrative Office headcount cut.
What happens to a law firm clerkship bonus if the clerk goes in-house or to Honors?
Usually nothing extra: Munger Tolles nets a prior employer’s payment, and Susman will not double-pay clerkships another firm already bonused. A clerk who takes the Department of Justice Honors Program — over 180 openings for 2026–2027, applications 28 August to 8 September 2026 — collects no firm signing check. A clerk who laterals in-house after the firm start typically already received the bonus, or forfeited it under a netting rule, before the company payroll begins. Two 2026–2027 Honors AUSA seats (District of Arizona, two; Northern District of Texas, two) are open only to applicants already in, finishing, or about to begin a clerkship.
Firm careers pages, NALP, OSCAR and the 2026 Am Law 100.
Signing amounts come from the firms’ own 2026 careers pages unless a row is labelled as legal press. Class counts come from NALP. Court pay comes from the Judiciary Salary Plan. 2025 profits come from the 2026 Am Law 100 as restated on 15 April 2026.
Sources and further reading
56 references- Sartori & Partners — New York Legal Talent Research Programme (1675 structured interviews; ~67,000 lawyers mapped; quarterly surveys since 2019; mandate telemetry) sartoriglobal.com ↗
- How to Apply | Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP cravath.com ↗
- FAQ | Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP cravath.com ↗
- Judicial Clerks - Munger Tolles & Olson LLP mto.com ↗
- Associate Hiring | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Susman Godfrey Defies BigLaw's Recruiting Frenzy with Applicant-First Summer Program susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Litigation firm Susman exceeds Milbank raises as associate pay hikes slowly spread reuters.com ↗
- U.S. Compensation & Benefits | Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP quinnemanuel.com ↗
- Frequently Asked Recruiting Questions | Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP quinnemanuel.com ↗
- Lawyers | Hueston Hennigan hueston.com ↗
- Boies Schiller Flexner LLP - Careers bsfllp.com ↗
- Laterals & Judicial Clerks | Paul, Weiss paulweiss.com ↗
- Salary Benefits (Latham & Watkins) lwcareers.com ↗
- Judicial Clerks | Jones Day jonesday.com ↗
- Jones Day adds four U.S. Supreme Court clerks from the October 2024 Term jonesday.com ↗
- Judicial Clerks - Gibson Dunn gibsondunn.com ↗
- Judicial Clerks | Covington & Burling LLP cov.com ↗
- Lawyers (WilmerHale) wilmerhale.com ↗
- Associate Hiring (Keker, Van Nest & Peters) keker.com ↗
- Resources - Qualifications, Salary, Benefits - OSCAR oscar.uscourts.gov ↗
- FEDERAL LAW CLERK HIRING PLAN oscar.uscourts.gov ↗
- Job Categories LAW DEGREE REQUIRED OR PREFERRED oscar.uscourts.gov ↗
- JUDICIARY SALARY PLAN New York-Newark ... Effective January 12, 2026 uscourts.gov ↗
- JUDICIARY SALARY PLAN Washington-Baltimore-Arlington ... Effective January 12, 2026 uscourts.gov ↗
- Judiciary Salary Plan Pay Rates uscourts.gov ↗
- Class of 2024 National Summary Report nalp.org ↗
- Employment for the Class of 2024 Jobs & JDs SELECTED FINDINGS nalp.org ↗
- Class of 2024 Law Graduates Exceed Employment Expectations, But Equity Gaps Persist nalp.org ↗
- U.S. Law Firm Lateral Hiring Shows Broad Growth in 2025 nalp.org ↗
- Judicial Business 2025 uscourts.gov ↗
- Annual Report on the Judiciary Workplace 2024 uscourts.gov ↗
- The Judiciary Fiscal Year 2026 Congressional Budget Summary uscourts.gov ↗
- REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE JUDICIAL CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED STATES March 10, 2026 uscourts.gov ↗
- The Latest on Public Policy and Advocacy Developments MARCH 2026 fedbar.org ↗
- The 2026 Am Law 100 Is Out, And Surprise: The Rich Law Firms Got Richer abovethelaw.com ↗
- Prestigious Biglaw Firm Ups The Ante On Six-Figure Bonuses For Federal Law Clerks abovethelaw.com ↗
- No. 2 Biglaw Firm In America Increases Its Bonuses — For Law Clerks! abovethelaw.com ↗
- Elite Litigation Boutique Raises Salaries, And Its Clerkship Bonuses abovethelaw.com ↗
- Elite Biglaw Firms Now Offering $500K In Signing Bonuses To Supreme Court Clerks abovethelaw.com ↗
- Jones Day Continues To Corner The Market On Supreme Court Clerks, With $450K+ Signing Bonuses Up For Grabs abovethelaw.com ↗
- Examining the Rise of Clerkship Stacking law.vanderbilt.edu ↗
- The Federal Clerkship Market Is Broken, And The Judges Know It abovethelaw.com ↗
- ALERT: Milbank Does It Again — Associate Salaries Are Going Up!!! abovethelaw.com ↗
- After Raising Associate Salaries, Milbank Announces Summer Bonuses taxprofblog.aals.org ↗
- Hiring Freeze – The White House whitehouse.gov ↗
- Memorandum of January 20, 2025 Hiring Freeze (90 FR 8247) govinfo.gov ↗
- Hiring Freezes and Job Offer Revocations yalejreg.com ↗
- ADDRESSING RISKS FROM SUSMAN GODFREY whitehouse.gov ↗
- Addressing Risks From Susman Godfrey (90 FR 15615) federalregister.gov ↗
- Memorandum Opinion (D.D.C.) — EO 14263 storage.courtlistener.com ↗
- DOJ Concedes Loss on EOs to Susman, Other Firms texaslawbook.net ↗
- Eligibility for the Attorney General's Honors Program justice.gov ↗
- Honors Program Participating Components justice.gov ↗
- Attorney General's Honors Program - Entry Level Attorneys justice.gov ↗
- Office of the Solicitor General | Employment Opportunities justice.gov ↗
- Attorney General's Honors Program (California) oag.ca.gov ↗
Class-cost products ($1.875 million, $2.625 million, $2.700 million) are arithmetic from NALP's 15-hire average times a named firm's published one-year bonus, not a NALP or Administrative Office total. Latham dollars are Above the Law, 21 July 2025, not the careers PDF. Supreme Court extras confirmed on 2026 firm pages are unpublished as amounts; $500,000 is a January 2024 Gibson Dunn spokeswoman quote and $450,000 is a December 2024 'reportedly' figure. No 2026 in-house clerkship-bonus dollar appears because none was published on company pages. Interview counts in George, Yoon and Gulati are judge interviews, not an authorized-chambers cut. OSCAR's 5,130 chambers figure is an undated position inventory.
Our own numbers — the New York 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, which sets out the cohorts, the survey waves and the mapping coverage behind every Sartori figure quoted above.
BigLaw associate salary scale 2026
The Milbank/market class-year ladder that clerks step onto after the signing check, effective 1 July 2026.
Read the 2026 scaleBigLaw bonus 2026
Year-end, special and clerkship figures as one lockstep bonus table. This page owns the dedicated clerkship signing check; that one owns the combined scale.
Read the bonus scaleWhen variable pay matters more than base
How bonuses, not the lockstep floor, move accept/decline decisions once the base has already matched.
Read the bonus mechanicsA quiet conversation
Funding a clerk class, or hiring the credential in-house?
We run the New York associate book for firms that pay this check and for general counsel who fund it in fees. Confidential, no obligation — and we will say if the seat you have in mind is a firm class-cost rather than a company hire.