Salary benchmarks
Cravath Scale 2026: The Full Associate Salary and Bonus Table
On 2 June 2026, Milbank raised first-year associate base pay to $235,000, effective 1 July. That is the class-year number the market still queries under Cravath's name. Cravath's own New York careers pages, accessed 30 September 2026, still publish $225,000 to $420,000. This page prints Cravath's November 2025 table, names the gap, and shows what a general counsel must put on an in-house offer.
The queried number and the printed number are no longer the same.
Across 1,675 structured interviews with New York partners and counsel, 61 of 94 general counsel and heads of legal over a 24-month window said they still budgeted the $225,000 floor Cravath froze for calendar 2026. Milbank moved that floor to $235,000 on 2 June 2026, effective 1 July. Cravath's How to Apply page still listed $225,000 to $420,000 on 30 September 2026.
Milbank announced the raise on 2 June 2026, effective 1 July 2026: a $235,000 first-year through a $455,000 eighth-year, in $10,000 junior and $20,000 mid-and-senior steps. Bloomberg Law, Global Legal Post, Above the Law and Law360 all dated that memo the same day. Queried as Cravath. Printed by Milbank.
Two printed floors now answer the same query. A general counsel who matches the wrong one loses the shortlist; an associate who quotes the wrong one walks into a compensation committee that has not reopened the band. Cravath’s own class-year table is below.
- 120 days
- From Milbank's 2 June 2026 raise to 30 September 2026, with Cravath's careers page still at $225,000–$420,000
- Cravath How to Apply, accessed 30 September 2026
- $4,327
- Weekly New York summer-associate rate on Cravath's How to Apply page
- Cravath careers, accessed 30 September 2026
- 32.0%
- Share of offices reporting $225,000 as the first-year base as of 1 January 2025 — the 2025 edition; no 2026 NALP salary survey is published
- NALP 2025 Associate Salary Survey
- 27
- Named-firm raise rows on Above the Law's 2026 scorecard as accessed 30 September 2026; Cravath is not among them
- Above the Law scorecard, latest row 17 September 2026
The cravath scale table Cravath still publishes.
The branded table is a class-year lockstep: base by graduation year, a year-end bonus that caps, and a special that sits on top. The ABA Journal printed the rungs from Cravath's 18 November 2025 memo; the firm's careers pages had not replaced them as of 30 September 2026.
Start with the memo, not the query. On 18 November 2025 Cravath set the 2025 year-end and special-bonus scale and held 2026 bases at $225,000 to $420,000, a freeze the ABA Journal published on 19 November 2025 (updated 20 November 2025). Class of 2025 base $225,000; class of 2024 $235,000; class of 2023 $260,000; class of 2022 $310,000; class of 2021 $365,000; class of 2020 $390,000; class of 2019 $420,000. The How to Apply page still describes that New York band, plus a discretionary year-end bonus, as of 30 September 2026. These class years are the November 2025 print, still live on the site; they are not a scale Cravath reset in 2026.
The bonus columns are the part Cravath actually led. Year-end: class of 2025 a prorated $15,000 plus a $6,000 special; class of 2024 $20,000 + $6,000; class of 2023 $30,000 + $10,000; class of 2022 $57,500 + $15,000; class of 2021 $75,000 + $20,000; class of 2020 $90,000 + $25,000; class of 2019 $105,000 + $25,000; class of 2018 $115,000 + $25,000. Bloomberg Law, on 18 November 2025, put the all-in special-plus-year-end top at $140,000. Global Legal Post, on 25 November 2025, quoting the memo, said virtually all associates receive the full amounts without billable-hour or similar eligibility criteria. New York and Washington, D.C. associates were paid on 12 December 2025; London on 19 December 2025.
| Class year (memo) | Seniority read | Base | Year-end | Special | Memo cash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Class of 2025 | First-year (prorated bonus) | $225,000 | $15,000 | $6,000 | $246,000 |
| Class of 2024 | Second-year | $235,000 | $20,000 | $6,000 | $261,000 |
| Class of 2023 | Third-year | $260,000 | $30,000 | $10,000 | $300,000 |
| Class of 2022 | Fourth-year | $310,000 | $57,500 | $15,000 | $382,500 |
| Class of 2021 | Fifth-year | $365,000 | $75,000 | $20,000 | $460,000 |
| Class of 2020 | Sixth-year | $390,000 | $90,000 | $25,000 | $505,000 |
| Class of 2019 | Seventh-year / senior base cap | $420,000 | $105,000 | $25,000 | $550,000 |
Memo cash = published base + 2025 year-end + 2025 special. It excludes Milbank’s 27 July 2026 specials and Cahill’s 24 September 2026 match, and it is not a guarantee of take-home. Sources: ABA Journal, 19 November 2025; Cravath How to Apply, accessed 30 September 2026.
Two facts sit underneath the rungs. The ABA Journal, citing Law360 on 19 November 2025, states the year-end bonus scale has been the same since 2021; Global Legal Post, on 25 November 2025, states it has topped out at $115,000 since 2021, with specials used as a top-up that does not reset next year’s published scale. A general counsel who treats “bonus” as a single lever is mixing a frozen year-end instrument with a discretionary special that moves when a bellwether wants it to. The branded ladder is a query, not a current Cravath memo.
| Rung | Cravath still publishes | Market floor after 1 July 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| First-year base | $225,000 | $235,000 |
| Senior base cap | $420,000 | $455,000 |
| Year-end bonus cap | $115,000 (Cravath set this) | Matched; rungs unchanged since 2021 |
The branded ladder is a query, not a current Cravath memo.
Who earns the figure, and who has to match it.
The lawyers on this lockstep sit first on a law-firm associate payroll. The general counsel, chief legal officer or head of HR who must put one of them on a company payroll is buying a lateral off that ladder, not a 3L.
Earns the lockstepPays to match it
- The associate Paid by class year at an elite New York or national firm that prints or matches the scale. Cash is the W-2. Hours screens, class-year credit and clerkship bonuses sit around it.
- The in-house grade Attorney, Senior Attorney, Associate General Counsel. Cash bands from the ACC survey sit below or beside the lockstep. Equity does not yet do the work.
- The GC / CLO / head of HR Signs the offer, owns the band, and has to explain to a compensation committee why last year’s internal grade does not clear this year’s class-year print.
The namesake seat is a New York associate on a five-department rotation, hired off a 2L summer, not off a job board.
- The pipeline is summer. Cravath’s hiring-process page, accessed 30 September 2026, states the firm hires very few associates laterally. Call-backs sit at Hudson Yards. NALP’s Class of 2025 national summary, released 5 August 2026, among 24,833 jobs with a reported source, put career-office recruitment / OCI at 20.9 percent; 73.5 percent of 27,858 offers with timing reported came before graduation. Class of 2026 employment figures are not published yet.
- The departments are few. Corporate, Litigation, Tax, Executive Compensation and Benefits, and Trusts and Estates. The summer-program page, accessed 30 September 2026, puts Corporate in 15 practice groups of typically three to five partners; Litigation at 35 partners; Tax at five partners and about 13 associates; Executive Compensation and Benefits at three and about 10; Trusts and Estates at three and about six. Summer associates in the specialist desks must split with Corporate or Litigation.
- Clerkship is a gate, not a detour. Cravath’s recruiting index, accessed 30 September 2026, states that approximately 44 percent of its litigators have clerked. The How to Apply page prices a qualifying clerkship bonus at $125,000 for one year or $150,000 for two years, in lieu, with one year of compensation credit per qualifying year, capped at two. NALP Class of 2025, released August 2026, recorded 3,253 clerkship jobs, 10.0 percent of employed graduates.
- Hours are not the bonus screen here. Cravath’s FAQ, accessed 30 September 2026, states there is no minimum billable-hour requirement and that hours are not used to set salary or bonuses. That is the namesake rule. Matching firms on the 2026 scorecard often differ: McDermott Will & Schulte and Quinn Emanuel listed 2,000-hour bonus screens; Norton Rose Fulbright listed 1,900.
In-house is the competing buyer, not the primary payer of the lockstep, and it almost never hires this cash straight from the J.D.
- Entry-level in-house is a residual. NALP Class of 2025 recorded 2,180 business-sector jobs, 6.7 percent of employed graduates; of those, 751 were bar-admission required or anticipated, with a full-time long-term median of $100,000 (25th $90,000, 75th $120,000). Selected Findings 2026 called business-sector employment a 35-year low. The GC reader of this page is buying years 3 to 8 off the lockstep.
- Law-firm years still price the in-house band. ACC/Empsight, data effective 1 March 2025, found Attorneys with prior law-firm experience at +16 percent median base and +18 percent total cash versus peers without it; chief legal officers with firm experience at +21 percent base and +13 percent total cash. AGC seats at companies with revenue above $5 billion sat 36 percent higher on median base, with a 75 percent total-compensation gap.
- The person who signs is paid in equity. Above the Law, on 1 August 2025, summarizing Corporate Counsel / ALM Intelligence’s 2025 General Counsel Compensation Report, put median pay for 544 legal chiefs at Fortune 1000 companies at $2.95 million, with technology holding 13 of the top 20 spots. That is the budget holder. It is not the Associate General Counsel grade.
- The industries on the other side of the invoice are the later employers. Cravath’s practices hub lists financial services, technology, media and entertainment, energy and infrastructure, healthcare and life sciences, telecoms, and digital assets among the client sectors. Those general counsel sit on the lockstep invoice first and hire off it later.
Firms of more than 500 lawyers took 6,588 Class of 2025 jobs, 33.2 percent of all law-firm jobs and still the single largest employer size of new J.D.s, NALP reported on 5 August 2026. Associate and entry-level attorney titles were 94.3 percent of reported law-firm jobs. The lockstep is paid by tens of named matching firms on the 2026 raise scorecard and by the 2025 bonus matchers — Cravath, Milbank, McDermott Will & Schulte, Quinn Emanuel, Sullivan & Cromwell, and the rest of that printed list — not by the U.S. lawyer population as a whole.
New York Court of Appeals Part 520 is the credential gate onto a New York seat: an ABA-approved J.D., including at least 83 credit hours, with the distance-education cap tightened effective 8 May 2024 (15 credits, none in the first 28). Cravath’s FAQ, accessed 30 September 2026, prices a joint J.D./M.B.A. arrival bonus at $25,000. None of that moves the dollar scale. It decides who can start on it.
The namesake did not move the floor. The query did.
Milbank printed $235,000 on 2 June 2026. Cravath's careers pages still had not, as of 30 September 2026. Between those dates the branded query kept running ahead of the branded memo.
A firm prints a numberThe query keeps the old name
- Bellwether memo A New York lockstep firm announces a class-year base. Historically that firm was Cravath. In this cycle it was Milbank, in June, not in bonus season.
- Public matchers Peers competing for the same 2Ls match within days, or they defer, or they print a boutique premium. The scorecard is a list of announcements, not a census.
- The brand sticks Associates and compensation committees still search the old name. The careers page of the namesake can lag the matching ladder by months without the query changing.
Sequence, dated. Milbank specials in summer 2025. Cravath year-end on 18 November 2025, matching those specials and freezing the bases it still calls the 2026 scale. Law.com American Lawyer, that same 18 November, named Cadwalader, Paul Hastings and McDermott as early bonus responders. ABA Journal, 25 November 2025, recorded Milbank matching the year-end bonus standard rather than raising it, and listed a non-exhaustive matcher wave: Davis Polk, Paul Weiss, Skadden, Simpson Thacher, Ropes & Gray, White & Case, Weil, Debevoise, Cleary Gottlieb, among others. Then the base moved: Milbank on 2 June 2026, effective 1 July, McDermott Will & Schulte the first public matcher, Hueston Hennigan the same-day full-scale match. Milbank’s own Law Students page, accessed 30 September 2026, still states that first-year associates are paid at $235,000 per year.
Cravath’s careers page still advertised the November 2025 band on 30 September 2026, 120 days after Milbank’s 2 June announcement. Above the Law’s raise scorecard, accessed the same day, lists 27 named-firm raise rows and does not list Cravath. The latest row is Troutman Pepper Locke on 17 September 2026, a partial match through the fourth year at $320,000, effective 1 January 2027. Ice Miller (10 August) and McKool Smith (18 August) had already deferred a $235,000 floor to that same January date. Katten, on 4 June, topped at class of 2019+ $440,000, not $455,000. Desmarais (10 June) printed class of 2026 at $255,000; Groombridge (25 June) $255,000 / $470,000. Those are announcements, not a headcount of who is actually paying them.
The last time Cravath led a rung rather than following it was the prior reset. On 28 November 2023 the ABA Journal reported Cravath matching Milbank’s class of 2023 at $225,000 and going $10,000 over at the then-top, class of 2017 at $420,000, effective 1 January 2024. That 2024 effective date is history. The live public band, as of 30 September 2026, is still $225,000–$420,000.
A general counsel who matches last year’s floor is not matching the market.
What a general counsel actually has to put on the page.
In-house dollar medians on this page are the ACC/Empsight 2025 edition, data effective 1 March 2025. The 2026 survey is out; its public write-up did not reprint that title stack. The class-year print is still the comparison the candidate walks in with.
Of 286 New York lockstep associates sitting in years 3 to 6 inside the same New York interview cohort, over a 24-month window, 214 told Sartori the first number they check on an in-house offer is the class-year base printed as the branded scale — not the company’s internal grade. That is the offer-construction problem. The ACC/Empsight 2025 survey of 1,632 U.S. in-house legal professionals, questionnaire 6 May to 27 June 2025, data effective 1 March 2025, printed median base / total cash of Attorney $148,000 / $204,000; Senior Attorney $201,000 / $260,000; Expert Attorney $227,000 / $285,000; Associate General Counsel $245,000 / $340,000; Deputy General Counsel $280,000 / $371,000. In that same 2025 edition, large-company chief legal officers at organizations with revenue above $5 billion had median total target compensation exceeding $1 million — 44 percent more base and 173 percent more total target than CLOs at organizations under $1 billion. Those dollar gaps are 2025 figures. Lexpert, on 17 September 2026, reporting the ACC/Empsight 2026 Law Department Compensation Survey of 1,627 U.S. in-house counsel and legal operations professionals, said general counsel and chief legal officers at large organizations had a median base 90 percent higher than at smaller companies. It did not reprint the title-level dollar table, so the medians above stay on the 2025 edition.
A head of talent at a New York financial-services company told us the board had approved a “Cravath scale” match against the pre-July floor and would not reopen the band when the June 2026 floor moved. A general counsel at a New York-headquartered public company with revenue above $5 billion told us the department had priced a fifth-year lockstep hire against the ACC Associate General Counsel median and then lost the first shortlist when the candidate’s current W-2 cleared the internal grade. Both are company-side failures of arithmetic, not of sourcing.
NALP business-sector bar-required median, Class of 2025
Full-time long-term median among 751 bar-admission required or anticipated business jobs. Not the lockstep.
NALP Class of 2025 National Summary Report, August 2026 ↗Non-promoted merit increases in the ACC/Empsight 2025 survey sat at a median 3.0 percent and an average 3.5 percent. The 2026 edition, as Lexpert reported it on 17 September 2026, did not reprint that merit pair. It did say 16 percent of promoted legal professionals reported raises of 20 percent or more, and that the majority of those promoted saw pay rise by less than 10 percent. Securities, intellectual property and patent litigation, antitrust, mergers and acquisitions, and pension and ERISA were among the highest-paid in-house specialties in that 2026 write-up. None of those increments, on the 2025 AGC median base of $245,000, closes a fourth-year lockstep W-2 of $310,000 on Cravath’s published base. The honest company offer at mid-level is a title, a reporting line, a scope, and equity that actually vests — or it is a cash match, and the cash match is the class-year print, not the grade.
One composite from the New York associate book. A public-company legal department with revenue above $5 billion opened an Associate General Counsel seat for a fifth-year lockstep corporate associate. The first offer tracked the ACC AGC median. The candidate produced a current lockstep print. The compensation committee took three weeks to reopen the band; by then the candidate had accepted a matching-firm stay. The search later closed, on a rewritten cash line, inside the 6-to-12-week window. The delay was not the market. It was the grade.
A general counsel who matches last year’s floor is not matching the market.
The raise was paid out of a boom that is already showing a collections lag.
Lockstep cash is not a wage survey. It is a distribution from a capital and regulatory-hours stack: mega-deal M&A, a four-year-high IPO print, and a year of tariff, freeze, and agency-rule work that pushed hours into elite New York corporate and litigation seats.
Hours that fund juniorsHours that fund the mid-level
- Registered offerings Capital-markets associates on SEC-registered notes and IPO execution. First-to-fourth-year staffing. The junior raise sits here.
- Controller and HSR paper Delaware safe-harbor scripts and a one-year expanded HSR form, then a revert. Mid-level corporate and antitrust, not a summer-class event.
- Mega-deal agency work Second Requests, custodians, document volume. Senior-associate and counsel staffing that does not move the first-year floor by itself, and that is what funds it.
LSEG, on 12 August 2026, recorded January–July 2026 global announced M&A at $3.19 trillion (+36 percent), U.S. targets at $1.69 trillion — the strongest opening seven months on record for U.S. targets — and 48 mega-deals over $10 billion totaling $1.29 trillion, about 40 percent of value, against a deal count down 10 percent. Renaissance Capital’s 2025 Annual Review, dated 2 January 2026, counted 202 traditional U.S. IPOs (market cap at least $50 million, excluding SPACs and closed-end funds) raising $44.0 billion, up from 150 / $29.6 billion in 2024, the strongest proceeds print since 2021. Cravath’s own corporate page, into late August 2026, was still listing SEC-registered notes closings in the billions. Concentration in mega-deals favors the handful of New York platforms that can staff them. It is not a broad associate hiring wave.
Thomson Reuters Institute with Georgetown Law, in the January 2026 Report on the State of the US Legal Market, covering a 184-firm panel, recorded 2025 average demand growth of 2.5 percent, worked rates up 7.3 percent, average firm profits up 13.0 percent, talent costs up 8.2 percent, and technology spend nearly 10 percent. Practice demand: M&A +3.3 percent, litigation +2.4 percent, real estate +2.0 percent. Am Law 100 standard rates were described as cracking the $1,000 barrier against about $600 elsewhere, with some clients moving work to firms 40 percent less. Midsize firms saw nearly 5 percent demand growth in late 2025; the Am Law 100 “couldn’t crack 2 percent.” The same report already flagged demand softening toward mid-2026. Reuters, on 7 January 2026, restated those prints and warned that in-house teams armed with AI might stop needing outside firms for entire categories of work.
Wells Fargo’s Legal Specialty Group, in a survey of more than 140 Am Law 200 firms reported by the ABA Journal on 25 August 2026, recorded first-half 2026 revenues up 12.4 percent, inventories up 17.7 percent, and the inventory collection cycle 5 percent slower. Lawyer compensation in that half was up 8.9 percent, down from 10.5 percent a year earlier. Global Legal Post, on 3 June 2026, citing the same group on 2025 full-year prints, had average revenue +12.6 percent, equity-partner net income +15.5 percent, hourly rates +9.6 percent. The June raise landed in a still-growing top line. The August print said collections were already lagging — the timing risk for year-end bonuses and for any January 2027 catch-up raise.
Above the Law’s 15 April 2026 recap of the 2026 Am Law 100 (fiscal 2025) is the capital stack underneath that: 62 firms cleared $1 billion gross revenue, Am Law 100 profits per equity partner +14 percent, revenue per lawyer +8.7 percent. Cravath appears on the RPL table at $2.255 million per lawyer, −0.04 percent year on year, the only name in that published top ten with a flat-to-down RPL print. Milbank PEP $7.620 million (+11.86 percent). The firm that moved the 2026 base was having a PEP year. The firm whose name is on the query was not the RPL leader.
The hours were not only transactional. A 20 January 2025 presidential hiring freeze, implemented the same day by OMB and OPM, revoked honors-program offers with starts after 8 February 2025. Reuters, on 27 January 2025, reported more than 2,000 jobs and summer internships cancelled or on hold, including DOJ volunteer summer internships that typically take about 1,800 law students; Article III clerkships were not hit. NALP Class of 2025 then recorded federal government employment excluding clerkships down 37.0 percent, from nearly 1,100 to about 690, and Washington, D.C. hiring down 13.2 percent against a national 7.7 percent decline. Junior lockstep seats absorbed a class that had lost the federal alternative. They did not need to replace it one-for-one; the share of the class available to large firms rose.
Two 2025 statutes reshaped the mid-level desk. Delaware Substitute 1 to Senate Bill 21, signed 25 March 2025, recoded DGCL § 144 controller-transaction safe harbors and § 220 inspections. The FTC’s expanded HSR form took effect 10 February 2025 and, after the Eastern District of Texas vacated it and the Fifth Circuit denied a stay on 19 March 2026, reverted to the pre-2025 form. The June salary raise sits three months after that revert. Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, decided 20 February 2026, held that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs; 2025’s tariff hours then reallocate toward refunds and alternative statutory authorities. Loper Bright (28 June 2024) and Corner Post (1 July 2024) remain the structural administrative-litigation engine underneath. None of those is a first-year staffing event. All of them are why a fifth-year on the lockstep is scarce.
The live illustration on Cravath’s own homepage is Paramount’s agreed $110 billion enterprise-value acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, announced 27 February 2026. The Department of Justice Antitrust Division, on 12 June 2026, closed an eight-month investigation after reviewing over two million documents from over 80 custodians, without a challenge on the SVOD, linear TV, and theatrical studio theories it named. That is senior-associate and counsel staffing. It does not set the first-year base. It is the kind of 2026 hours that funded the people who do.
The files that stall are company-side, and they stall on the band.
Sartori & Partners has placed in-house counsel since 2017 and opened its New York hub in 2023. The closed-search book on this associate line is 33 files over three years. The ones that ran long were not the law-firm laterals.
Of those 33 closed New York associate searches over three years, 15 were company-side seats — in-house Attorney through Associate General Counsel — buying talent off the lockstep, and 18 were law-firm associate laterals. Nine of those company-side files were years 3 to 6, the band that actually collides with the 2025 ACC AGC cash median. Six of those company-side files required a rewritten first offer after the candidate produced a matching-firm scale print the hiring company had not budgeted. Eight of those searches ran past the 12-week end of the typical timeline; every one of them was a company-side seat whose board had locked cash before the 1 July 2026 floor and would not reopen it after the June move. The shortlist on those files was assembled inside the window. The files that ran long were the ones whose compensation committee would not meet a second time.
New York associate counter-offer incidence on this line is 37 percent. Sartori’s New York associate mandate telemetry records a median of 11 working days from offer to acceptance. Typical time-to-fill is 6 to 12 weeks. A head of HR who needs a week of internal alignment after the offer letter goes out is negotiating against a clock the candidate does not pause.
Sartori maps approximately 67,000 lawyers in New York. That file records employer, seniority and practice. It cannot see which published scale a given associate is actually paid on, because that number lives inside a firm memo and a W-2. The global mapping behind that file is 1,480,000+ lawyer profiles. Use the careers page and the last dated announcement to price the offer. Use the mapping to find the people.
A second composite. A PE-backed platform opened a Senior Attorney seat for a third-year lockstep corporate associate. The first band was built from the ACC 2025 Senior Attorney median of $201,000. The candidate’s current base was Cravath’s published third-year of $260,000, plus a year-end the November 2025 memo set at $30,000. The company matched base, kept the bonus discretionary, and closed in the eighth week. The general counsel who ran it treated the class-year print as the floor and the title as the variable. That is the only arithmetic that has worked on this book.
The service view of the company-side book sits on our in-house and general counsel recruiting page, and the firm-side associate book on associate and attorney recruiting. Companies building a legal function rather than adding a seat should start with hiring your first general counsel. The matching-firm eight-rung ladder, when that is the question, is the 2026 BigLaw associate salary scale.
Class-year lockstep pay: questions from both sides of the offer
What is the cravath scale in 2026?
The queried 2026 first-year figure is $235,000, set by Milbank on 2 June 2026 and effective 1 July — not by Cravath. Cravath’s own New York careers pages, accessed 30 September 2026, still publish a base scale of $225,000 to $420,000, the band the firm froze for calendar 2026 in its 18 November 2025 bonus memo. That is 120 days after Milbank’s announcement, and Cravath does not appear on Above the Law’s 2026 raise scorecard as accessed the same day. What Cravath did set, and what lockstep peers matched, is the 2025 year-end and special-bonus ladder, with an all-in bonus top of $140,000. No 2026 year-end memo had been published as of 30 September 2026.
What base salaries does Cravath still publish for New York associates?
A New York band of $225,000 to $420,000, still on the firm’s How to Apply page as of 30 September 2026. The ABA Journal printed the class-year rungs from the 18 November 2025 memo: class of 2025 at $225,000 through class of 2019 at $420,000. Those are the 2026 bases Cravath still advertises; they are not a new 2026 scale. Summer associates are paid $4,327 per week on that same page. Treat the careers page as Cravath’s public cash architecture until a new memo appears.
What year-end and special bonuses did Cravath set in 2025?
Year-end rungs from a prorated $15,000 (class of 2025) to $115,000 (class of 2018), plus specials of $6,000 to $25,000 that take the top to $140,000. Bloomberg Law reported the $140,000 all-in top on 18 November 2025; the ABA Journal printed the class-year table the next day. Those year-end rungs have been numerically unchanged since 2021, and no 2026 year-end scale had replaced them as of 30 September 2026. New York and Washington associates were paid on 12 December 2025, London on 19 December 2025, with no billable-hour screen.
How should a general counsel match lockstep cash on an in-house offer?
The ACC/Empsight 2025 survey put Associate General Counsel median base at $245,000 as of 1 March 2025 — $65,000 below Cravath’s published fourth-year of $310,000. That dollar is the 2025 edition: Lexpert’s 17 September 2026 report on the ACC/Empsight 2026 survey did not reprint title-level bases. Price the class-year base the candidate is leaving, not the internal grade you are hiring into. Equity closes the gap at GC and chief legal officer; it does not close it at Attorney through AGC. Sartori’s New York associate desk records a median 11 working days from offer to acceptance: the candidate will have a matching-firm print in hand before your compensation committee reconvenes.
Did the June 2026 base raise change the bonus scale?
No. Cravath’s year-end rungs have been unchanged since 2021, and neither the June 2026 base raise nor any memo through 30 September 2026 reset them. Firms have used special bonuses as a top-up rather than lifting the published year-end ladder. Milbank announced its own specials of $6,000 to $25,000 on 27 July 2026, payable by 31 August. Cahill Gordon & Reindel was the first scorecard match of that special scale, on 24 September 2026, payable 15 October. A company that copies the 2025 special onto a 2026 base is mixing two instruments.
How fast do New York associate-to-in-house offers actually close?
Sartori’s New York associate desk records a median of 11 working days from offer to acceptance across 33 closed searches in three years. Counter-offer incidence on that line is 37 percent. The typical search runs 6 to 12 weeks. Files that ran past that window were company-side seats whose boards had locked cash to the pre-July floor and would not reopen it after the 2 June 2026 move to $235,000.
Firm memos, careers pages, NALP, ACC, and the capital prints underneath.
Class-year dollars come from Cravath's November 2025 memo as printed by the ABA Journal and from the firm's own careers pages accessed 30 September 2026. The 2026 first-year floor comes from Milbank's June announcement. In-house dollar medians come from the ACC/Empsight 2025 edition; the 2026 survey's public write-up supplied the size-gap and promotion figures only. Demand and deal value come from Thomson Reuters, Wells Fargo, LSEG and Renaissance Capital.
Sources and further reading
34 references- Sartori & Partners — New York Legal Talent Research Programme (1,675 structured interviews; 1,480,000+ lawyers mapped; mandate telemetry) sartoriglobal.com ↗
- Cravath kicks off associate bonus season and other firms follow abajournal.com ↗
- How to Apply | Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP cravath.com ↗
- FAQ | Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP cravath.com ↗
- Hiring Process | Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP cravath.com ↗
- Recruiting | Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP cravath.com ↗
- Summer Program | Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP cravath.com ↗
- Law Students | Milbank LLP milbank.com ↗
- Milbank, McDermott Raise Associate Salaries Up to $455,000 news.bloomberglaw.com ↗
- ALERT: Milbank Does It Again — Associate Salaries Are Going Up!!! abovethelaw.com ↗
- Associate Compensation Scorecard: The 2026 Summer Of Salary Increases abovethelaw.com ↗
- Cravath May Be Waiting Until Year-End Bonus Season To Make Its Biglaw Pay Move abovethelaw.com ↗
- Cravath Doles Out Associate Bonuses Ranging Up to $140,000 news.bloomberglaw.com ↗
- Raft of Big Law firms line up to match pacesetter Cravath’s associate bonuses globallegalpost.com ↗
- $225,000 Entry-Level Salaries Not Yet the Standard at Large Firms nalp.org ↗
- Class of 2025 National Summary Report nalp.org ↗
- Employment for the Class of 2025 — Selected Findings nalp.org ↗
- 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey Executive Summary acc.com ↗
- Specialization strengthens compensation for in-house lawyers: ACC lexpert.ca ↗
- Stat(s) Of The Week: Tech Tops The Charts abovethelaw.com ↗
- 2026 Report on the State of the US Legal Market blogs.thomsonreuters.com ↗
- Are law firms headed for a downturn? Billing rates may hold the key reuters.com ↗
- BigLaw firms perform well across the board but see challenges with collections, new Wells Fargo data shows abajournal.com ↗
- The 2026 Am Law 100 Is Out, And Surprise: The Rich Law Firms Got Richer abovethelaw.com ↗
- Global M&A update: A record-breaking market that's becoming increasingly concentrated lseg.com ↗
- 2025 Annual Review renaissancecapital.com ↗
- Statement of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division on the Closing of Its Investigation of the Merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. justice.gov ↗
- Premerger Notification Program | Federal Trade Commission ftc.gov ↗
- Bill Detail — Delaware General Assembly (SB 21 / Substitute 1) legis.delaware.gov ↗
- Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (Tariffs) scotusblog.com ↗
- Hiring Freeze whitehouse.gov ↗
- Trump's hiring freeze leaves thousands of law students out in the cold reuters.com ↗
- Cravath finally announces associate raises, and they partly surpass Milbank scale abajournal.com ↗
- N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. Tit. 22 § 520.3 law.cornell.edu ↗
Sartori figures are the New York associate interview cohort of 1,675 and mandate telemetry on the New York associate line. Public compensation tables are firm memos and careers pages accessed 30 September 2026, NALP office-reported bases as of 1 January 2025 (no 2026 Associate Salary Survey is published), NALP Class of 2025 destinations released 5 August 2026, and ACC/Empsight in-house medians as of 1 March 2025. The 2026 ACC/Empsight survey, as reported by Lexpert on 17 September 2026, did not reprint those title-level dollars. No figure here is a Cravath headcount: the firm does not publish FTE on the pages, and none is used. The eight-rung matching ladder after 1 July 2026 is documented on the sibling BigLaw scale page; this page cites only the $235,000 floor, the $455,000 top, and the $10,000 / $20,000 step shape.
Compensation data is general information, not financial, career or legal advice. Actual pay varies by firm, company, class year, hours eligibility, equity and bonus discretion. Figures effective as dated in the prose. The next bellwether memo can reset the matching ladder without the branded query changing its name.
Adjacent benchmarks for the same two readers.
BigLaw associate salary scale 2026
The Milbank/market lockstep — $235,000 first-year through $455,000 eighth-year — owned as the national matching ladder, not the branded Cravath memo.
Read the market lockstepGeneral counsel and CLO salary 2026
What chief legal officers and general counsel earn by company size — the budget holder who has to match lockstep cash on an in-house offer.
Read the GC benchmarkIn-house and general counsel recruiting
How we fill Attorney through GC seats at companies that are buying talent off the lockstep, not hiring 3Ls.
See the in-house deskA quiet conversation
Matching lockstep cash on an in-house offer?
We price New York associate talent against the printed memo, not against the branded query, and we will say when a grade cannot clear a class-year W-2. Confidential, no obligation, for general counsel, chief legal officers and heads of HR.