Latham Watkins Salary 2026: The January Class-Year Letter

Latham’s published 2026 first-year base is still $225,000. The same cell applies to the Class of 2025. From there the letter steps $235,000, $260,000, $310,000, $365,000, $390,000, $420,000, and $435,000 for the Class of 2018. Summer associates are paid $9,375 semi-monthly on the same page; twenty-four semi-monthly periods annualize to $225,000, which is the first-year cell, though the firm does not print an annual summer figure. Clerkship progression credit and a bonus are mentioned without a dollar; an additional bonus for a U.S. Supreme Court clerk is mentioned the same way.

This is Latham’s published 2026 U.S. lockstep base. It is not a bonus scale, not London NQ pay, and not PEP. Individual total cash depends on hours, bonus eligibility, and class-year credit — none of which this letter prices.

NALP’s Associate Salary Survey is biennial. The private-sector salaries index, accessed 30 September 2026, still leads with the June 2025 Bulletin+. There is no 2026 edition, so these medians stay labeled as of 1 January 2025 and are not a 2026 market print. In that 2025 survey, $225,000 was the most frequently reported first-year figure: 32.0 percent of all offices and 44.7 percent of offices in firms of 701 or more lawyers. The overall median first-year base was $200,000; in firms of more than 700 lawyers the median was $215,000. Six of 19 analyzed cities already had a $225,000 median, including Austin, Boston, Houston, New York City, San Francisco, and the Washington, D.C. area. Los Angeles / Orange County accounted for 10.4 percent of all $225,000 observations, from 27 reporting offices. The ABA Journal, on 29 May 2025, noted 437 responding firms and attributed flat medians since 2023 to waning talent-war pressure. Latham’s still-live 2026 letter therefore prints the 2025 mode, not a new floor.

The Class of 2018 cell sits $15,000 above Cravath’s 2026 top. At year one the same letter sits $10,000 below the June 2026 market floor; at the senior rung it sits $20,000 below. Above the Law’s running scorecard, opened 5 June 2026 and accessed 30 September 2026, lists Milbank as first mover and names full-scale or near-full matches including McDermott, Hueston Hennigan, Quinn Emanuel, Sullivan & Cromwell (26 June), and Norton Rose Fulbright (30 June). Ice Miller (10 August) and McKool Smith (18 August) deferred the new scale to 1 January 2027. Massumi + Consoli matched on 31 August, effective 1 September. Troutman Pepper Locke, on 17 September, set a partial match effective 1 January 2027: $235,000 at class year 1 and $320,000 at class year 4. Latham & Watkins is not a named row. On 26 August 2026, 85 days after 2 June, Above the Law described most of the large-firm market as still on the prior letter. One hundred twenty days after 2 June, the same scorecard still does not name Latham. That compilation is not a census of every Am Law firm; it is the public record this page can cite. Latham’s own careers table, accessed 30 September 2026, had not moved.

Above the Law, on 30 January 2025, reported that Latham announced year-end bonuses for 2024 performance that week, with extra cash above the hours threshold already stated, base bonuses at market, median bonuses for every class year thousands of dollars above market, and top bonuses well above the market scale, paid 31 January 2025. That is the last fully dated Latham class-year cycle. It is not a 2026 bonus. The only extracted class-year dollars in that article are 2023-cycle tops, printed for comparison: a second-year top of $28,000 and a seventh-year top of $172,500. The 2024-cycle class-year chart on that page is an image; it is not transcribed here. ABA Journal, 19 November 2025, printed the Cravath year-end-plus-special ladder for the 2025 bonus season and noted the year-end rungs had been the same since 2021 — $15,000 plus a $6,000 special at the junior end, $115,000 plus $25,000 at the Class of 2018 end, in that Cravath memo. The 2026 special-bonus wave is a different instrument. Above the Law’s scorecard, accessed 30 September 2026, transcribes Milbank’s 27 July 2026 special bonus as $6,000 for the Class of 2026 and $25,000 for the Class of 2018 and special counsel, paid 31 August 2026, with no hours gate, and Cahill Gordon’s 24 September 2026 match as $6,000 for the Class of 2025 and $25,000 for the Class of 2018, payable 15 October 2026. The memo images are not re-transcribed. Latham is not a named row.

Clerkship cash is a hiring gate on the same seat, not a second employer. NALP’s 28 May 2025 Associate Salary Survey press release — the same biennial 2025 edition, not a 2026 survey — found that 73 percent of law offices offered judicial clerkship bonuses. Above the Law, on 21 July 2025, reported that Latham increased the signing bonus for all federal district and appellate clerkships to $125,000, with a second qualifying clerkship adding $25,000 ($150,000 total). No 2026 Latham clerkship-bonus memo was located. The careers page itself, accessed 30 September 2026, does not print those dollars; it states progression credit and a bonus, plus an additional bonus for a U.S. Supreme Court clerk, without a figure. The Supreme Court dollar is therefore not public on the letter, and the $125,000 figure stays labeled 21 July 2025. On 5 January 2026 the firm announced a US$25,000 Early Experience Stipend for students who join the 2027 Summer Associate Program and spend summer 2026 in qualifying non-profit, chambers, or academic legal work; 2026 1L summers are ineligible.

London is the same firm on a different regulator and a different payroll. Latham Careers UK, accessed 30 September 2026, prints a starting trainee salary of £60,000, rising to £65,000 in the second year, a £20,000 maintenance grant per PGDL or SQE course, and AAB A-level and 2:1 degree gates, with SQE via BPP. That page does not print a newly qualified salary, and no Latham document states a 2026 London NQ figure. The London office page, accessed the same day, states nearly 500 lawyers and Solicitors Regulation Authority authorization of Latham & Watkins (London) LLP (SRA No. 203820). Trainee sterling and the U.S. class-year letter are different payrolls.

Open Latham laterals in 2026 ask for third-to-seventh year, not first-year lockstep. Latham Careers experienced-hire pages, accessed 11 September 2026, list public titles at an Am Law 2 global firm: Corporate M&A / Private Equity (minimum two years; join third-to-fifth year; Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, Orange County); Finance, borrower-side senior (minimum four years of borrower-side private credit, acquisition, or leveraged finance, with sponsor-side PE acquisition financings required); Project Development & Finance (minimum two years; prefer a large national or international firm; join third-to-fourth year; Houston, New York, San Diego, Washington); Complex Commercial Litigation (third-to-sixth year; Chicago through Washington, including Los Angeles); Antitrust litigation and/or merger control (third-to-seventh year; Austin through Washington); Emerging Companies & Growth (third-to-fifth year; San Francisco and Silicon Valley); Tax — Energy & Infrastructure (minimum three years; tax-equity, partnership tax, power and energy-transition; Washington and New York); and Connectivity, Privacy & Information / Copyright (minimum three years; tech and media counsel plus generative-AI copyright litigation). Several of those California pages apply the City of Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, and Bay Area seats apply the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance — employer-side compliance gates, not wage cells.

Entry-level intake for fall 2027, on the New Associates page accessed the same day, stocks a different class: Litigation & Trial (antitrust in Los Angeles; complex commercial in San Diego; securities and M&A litigation in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego); Finance (general finance, banking, project development and finance, restructuring, private equity finance, structured finance across Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, New York, and Washington); and Corporate (general corporate in Austin and Houston; capital markets in London, Los Angeles, New York, Orange County, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Washington; environment, land and resources; financial institutions; healthcare and life sciences; investment funds; M&A and private equity in Boston; real estate). Candidates may apply to one office and practice. LLM students graduating spring 2027 are eligible on starred New York and London lines. Summer associates are drawn from the Class of 2029 at ABA-accredited law schools; the IP litigation summer program requires a technical undergraduate background. International summers for U.S. students run to Hong Kong, London, and Singapore.

The partnership funnel that sits above the letter ran on a January and March calendar. Firm news on 29 October 2025 named 40 associates elected to the partnership and 56 associates promoted to counsel, effective 1 January 2026, following 19 counsel elected earlier in 2025. Firm news on 20 February 2026 named 22 counsel elected to the partnership, effective 1 March 2026. Combined, those two 2025–26 releases put 62 new partners on the associate and counsel tracks. The prior cycle, referenced on the October 2025 page, was 24 associates to partner and 27 to counsel effective 1 January 2025. Practice labels on the 2026 lists, with no names, include M&A and private equity, banking and private credit, capital markets, emerging companies, data and technology transactions, white collar defense and investigations, transactional tax, securities and M&A litigation, antitrust, investment funds, real estate, executive compensation, complex commercial litigation, connectivity, privacy and information, project development and finance, structured finance, public company representation, and environment, land and resources. Seats named include London, Paris, Milan, Frankfurt, New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Orange County, the Bay Area, Houston, Boston, San Diego, Chicago, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Senior-associate rungs on the still-live letter empty into counsel and partner six to nine months before any possible 1 January 2027 catch-up to the June floor.

We have worked the Los Angeles associate market for more than 10 years, for companies that need to put a lockstep-scale lawyer on their own payroll and for firms that still pay the letter. Over the last three years we closed 30 associate searches at a 93 percent completion rate, on a typical 6 to 12 week timeline. The composites below are that desk, anonymized by category. No real company, firm, or lawyer is named.

An industrials platform. A private-equity-backed manufacturer asked for an Associate General Counsel with a sponsor-side M&A diet, priced internally against Senior Attorney cash. The shortlist was fourth- and fifth-year corporate associates on a Latham or peer letter. The compensation committee cleared the Class of 2023 cell ($260,000) and refused the Class of 2022 cell ($310,000). We retitled the seat, moved incentive cash, and closed in 11 weeks on a fourth-year. The fifth-years stayed. Class-year credit, not the headline first-year, was the number that mattered.

An entertainment company. A Los Angeles head of legal needed a copyright litigator who had already seen generative-AI complaints. The internal band topped at Senior Attorney. A fifth-year on a Latham-scale letter declined after the stay counter cleared the printed cell and the in-house paper could not. That file is one of the 4 company-side searches in our Los Angeles associate book that did not fill. The constraint was the committee, not the shortlist.

A public energy issuer. A general counsel needed a project-finance lawyer who could read prohibited-foreign-entity covenants into construction-start papers after 31 December 2025. The company matched the Class of 2023 cell plus a short-term incentive sized off the ACC Associate General Counsel target, and signed in 9 working days — the same median our Los Angeles associate telemetry records — because the band had been built to the letter before anyone was approached. The June market floor never entered the paper. The printed cell did.

If you are the associate reading the letter, the cell you earn is the one on Latham Careers until a new memo exists; bonus is hours-gated and not published for the last cycle. If you are the general counsel, chief legal officer, or head of legal matching it, title the seat so the band can clear the class year you actually need, and decide in writing whether you are underwriting January or waiting for a match that has not been announced. That conversation is an in-house counsel search, not a campus rumor, and it starts with a private brief. The wider in-house stack, independent of this firm’s letter, sits on our general counsel salary benchmark and the salary hub.