Debevoise Salary 2026: The Printed Table, Not the Lockstep

Debevoise’s Compensation & Benefits page, accessed 11 September 2026, lists “Salary - starting at $225,000” plus discretionary bonuses, four weeks’ vacation and a US 401(k). It does not publish a class-year ladder. That is the only US associate base figure the employer itself currently posts. Biglaw Investor’s historical table records the 2025 and early-2026 market scale as $225,000 for a first-year through $435,000 for an eighth-year, then the post-Milbank 2026 scale as $235,000–$455,000. This firm’s public starting cell matches the pre-July 2026 floor, not the post-July floor. The market-wide lockstep is owned by a sibling page; the cell that belongs here is the employer line.

Milbank moved first on 2 June 2026, as Above the Law recorded that day, with a class-of-2026 / 2025 base of $235,000 and a class-of-2018 base of $455,000, effective 1 July 2026; McDermott matched the same day. The PDF hosted on that site and signed 2 June 2026 is that first-mover memorandum, not a Debevoise document. Above the Law’s running 2026 raise scorecard, last updated in the page through 31 August 2026, lists dozens of matchers and does not include Debevoise. A 2026 summer special-bonus match is also absent from that scorecard; Milbank announced a third consecutive summer special on 27 July 2026. A complete Debevoise class-year US base scale for the second half of 2026 is therefore not public. It is omitted, not estimated. The June 2026 market raise is a different document.

The laterals FAQ, accessed 11 September 2026, says the firm is a lockstep firm, salaries are reviewed in January of each year, and the discretionary bonus is generally determined in December, with mid-year joiners prorated. It also says the firm does not have fixed chargeable hours required for associates, and that associates should aim to achieve approximately 2,000 hours per year including pro bono. The 2025 bonus tracker’s hours gate of “None” is the same idea in a different sentence. For a general counsel reading an offer, that is the opposite of many in-house bonus plans, which gate cash on a performance year. Earliest partnership consideration is the eighth year. Special-associate pay, the benefits page notes, is determined on an individual basis; this firm does not publish a counsel scale.

US intake is a 2L summer-associate machine, not an open 1L or off-cycle bulk hire. The firm’s 1L message states that it does not hire 1Ls for the summer program, that associates have almost always spent a summer there, and that it looks only to a limited extent outside that class. Three formal US programs sit in New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Summer Associate FAQs put the 2025 weekly rate at $4,330, with a minimum of eight weeks; fifty-two times $4,330 is $225,160, the weekly equivalent of the published starting base. Ten to twelve summer associates generally do office stints. Ninety-six percent of 2025 summer associates worked on pro bono, on the US students page. Judicial clerks are generally placed with their graduating class, receive a bonus and one year of credit for each year of clerkship, and the offer generally remains open during the clerkship. Those are process facts. They are not a substitute for an unpublished class-year grid.

The funds and investment-management page, accessed 11 September 2026, says more than 150 corporate lawyers worldwide devote all of their time to fund formation, across New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Private fund transactions names sponsors, secondary investors, limited partners, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and pension-plan investors as clients, and puts co-investment volume at on average approximately 100 transactions per year. Those are law-firm seats billed to sponsors, LPs and registered-fund managers — not in-house GC titles. They are why a general counsel at a pension, sovereign or insurer-as-LP pays this firm’s rates, and why the 2026 partner class included London and Hong Kong / Shanghai investment-management and private-fund-transaction promotions.

Debevoise’s 2026 Private Equity Midyear Outlook, dated 22 July 2026, put H1 2026 aggregate PE fundraising at $250 billion, 13 percent below H1 2025, with rolling 12-month PE fundraising down for an eighth consecutive quarter. Q1 2026 capital raised was 11 percent above the prior quarter but 10 percent below Q1 2025. Over half of Q1 2026 PE capital came from the ten largest funds, against a 26.8 percent decade average; 245 funds closed in Q1 2026, about half the 2021–2025 quarterly average; 91.7 percent of those that closed were larger than predecessor funds; average time to final close compressed to 15.6 months in 2025 from 18.1 months in 2024. Secondaries were 19 percent of PE fundraising in Q1 2026, the highest share on record; private-debt secondaries raised $12.2 billion in Q1 2026, more than 75 percent of that sub-strategy’s full-year 2025 total. Citing Secondaries Investor / PJT for Q1 2026, the same PDF put global secondaries at about $40 billion, down about 11 percent year on year, with 27 continuation vehicles closed in Q1 2026 against 11 a year earlier. Preqin News, on 3 June 2026, citing William Blair’s 2026 Secondary Market Report, put 2025 secondaries transaction value at $220 billion and a 2026 figure of $250 billion; PE secondaries funds raised $29.7 billion in Q1 2026 against $80.6 billion in full-year 2025; buyout exit value was $95.6 billion in Q1 2026, down 34 percent quarter on quarter, the first print below $100 billion since Q1 2024. Hiring consequence: fewer first-close fund-formation juniors relative to mid-senior private-fund-transaction, secondaries and GP-led continuation-vehicle lawyers in New York, London and Hong Kong / Shanghai through the rest of 2026.

ILPA published a Continuation Fund Disclosure Template on 27 January 2026, so limited partners can start a roll-or-sell analysis on a standardized pack. The same firm outlook reports that in May 2026 ILPA publicly recommended that continuation funds be referred to as “conflict vehicles,” and that in June 2026 ILPA updated guidance on how GPs should run those transactions. Treat the May and June language as the firm’s dated report of ILPA, not as a ILPA HTML page. The Fifth Circuit, on 5 June 2024, in No. 23-60471, vacated the SEC private-fund adviser rules; the firm’s 6 June 2024 client alert said to put comprehensive PFAR-compliance builds on hold while examinations and enforcement under the existing Advisers Act continue. That is residual 2024–26 work at mid-level and up, not a 2026 junior build-out for a dead rule.

Carrier Management, on 12 February 2026, citing S&P Global Market Intelligence, put North America insurance M&A at 652 deals totaling $41.2 billion in 2025, against 674 deals and $59.3 billion in 2024. The firm’s insurance page cites S&P Global 2025 for a number-one rank in insurance-underwriter M&A deal volume for the second straight year and in insurance-broker M&A deal value; report those as the firm’s citation of S&P, not as an independently opened league-table PDF. The insurance transactional page cites pension-plan de-risking transactions totaling in excess of $30 billion of assets. The 21 January 2026 insurance outlook described 2025 global insurance deal volume as slightly down from 2024, with 2026 expectation of larger M&A, sidecars and insurance–asset-management collaboration, and private capital, sovereigns, and Japanese, European and Middle East capital as buyers.

NAIC’s 2026 Summer National Meeting in Columbus ran 11–14 August 2026. Debevoise In Depth, on 24 August 2026, recorded a Macroprudential Risk Dashboard Summary exposed on 12 August 2026 for comment through 14 September 2026, with private credit described as a significant risk; life RBC updates on reinsurance recapture referred for year-end 2027; Model #285 comments to 28 September 2026; SSAP No. 26 comments to 2 October 2026; an IMR effective-date slip from 1 January 2027 to 1 January 2028; and, from an 8 July 2026 interim, new life RBC factors for CLOs, CBOs and CDOs effective year-end 2026, including an 11.77 percent thin-tranche surcharge. The NAIC Financial Condition (E) Committee meeting summary dated 14 August 2026 corroborates the Model #285 exposure and the AI-systems evaluation-pilot update. Hiring consequence: New York insurance transactional and insurance-regulatory associates and counsel work comment letters now through October 2026, CLO RBC at year-end 2026, recapture RBC into 2027, IMR into 2028.

The PRA’s CP8/26 on funded reinsurance, published 29 April 2026, closed on 31 July 2026, with proposed implementation 1 July 2027 and a savings provision: the rules would not apply where all covered risks are fully transferred to the reinsurer on or before 30 September 2026. About 15 percent of new UK bulk-purchase-annuity business had recently been ceded via funded reinsurance, on the PRA figure in that paper. London insurance transactional, PRT, sidecar and ILS seats — NQ through partner — had a close-by-30-September-2026 structuring window, then capital work into 2027.

Treasury’s outbound investment security program took effect 2 January 2025, covering semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies and artificial intelligence, with the country of concern the PRC including Hong Kong and Macau. The America First Investment Policy memorandum of 21 February 2025 directs CFIUS use against PRC-affiliated investment in listed US sectors, seeks stronger authority over greenfield, and places the August 2023 outbound order under review with possible expansion to private equity, venture, greenfield, public securities and LP sources including pensions and endowments. Foreign adversaries named there include the PRC, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and the Maduro regime. D.C. CFIUS and national-security seats and London antitrust and FDI seats — both 2026 partner-class labels — work inbound plus outbound. NYDFS Insurance Circular Letter No. 7, dated 11 July 2024, sets New York expectations for insurers using artificial intelligence systems and external consumer data in underwriting and pricing; that file remains live in the 2026 insurance outlook’s state-regulatory note. The life sector was a named 2025 target of Scattered Spider in that same outlook, against a CISA and FBI joint advisory updated 29 July 2025. Data Strategy and Security plus insurance-regulatory associates sit on incident response, NYDFS exams and vendor contracts; the in-house counterpart is the carrier general counsel and CISO, not a GS-scale agency lawyer.