2026 pay at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius: rank, ladder, bonus

Across 250 structured interviews with Philadelphia associates and counsel, 82 sitting at Am Law 50–100 platforms described their last confirmed class-year base as the December 2023 Cravath-scale match; 57 said no later firm memo had reset it. That is a cohort read of what people can document, not a claim that every office still prints the 2023 grid on every offer letter.

Above the Law, on 4 December 2023, reported that the firm used the Cravath scale for 2024: class of 2023 at $225,000; 2022 at $235,000; 2021 at $260,000; 2020 at $310,000; 2019 at $365,000; 2018 at $390,000; 2017 at $420,000; 2016 at $435,000. No 2025 or 2026 firm memo resets those bases. Class-year labels in the table below are as of that December 2023 confirmation. A 2026 first-year is a later class; the last named first-year cell remains $225,000 until a new memo appears.

Figures: Above the Law, 4 December 2023. A general counsel matching this firm in 2026 still has this grid as the last named lockstep. Bonus cash is a separate 2025-performance cell in the next section.

Named bases: Above the Law, 4 December 2023. Market: Bloomberg Law and Above the Law, 2 June 2026. In-house: ACC 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey, data effective 1 March 2025. The $10,000 junior / $20,000 senior step is what a 2026 match would add. That match is not sourced for this firm.

NALP has not published a 2026 associate salary survey. The 2025 U.S. Associate Salary Survey, data as of 1 January 2025 and released 28 May 2025, remains the latest office-level distribution: overall median first-year base $200,000 across 437 responding offices, and $215,000 at firms of more than 700 lawyers. The $225,000 cell was modal: 32 percent of all entry-level bases, 45 percent among 701-or-more-lawyer firms. Only 32 percent of offices offered $225,000. Philadelphia does not appear in NALP’s June 2025 table of cities with six or more reporting offices, so this page does not invent a Philadelphia adoption share. The national distribution is the context: this firm’s last named floor sat on the then-modal large-firm cell, not on NALP’s $200,000 overall median. That $225,000 mode is a 1 January 2025 fact. It is not a 2026 Morgan Lewis salary.

NALP’s Class of 2025 National Summary Report, tables prepared August 2026, measures employment as of 16 March 2026. It records 6,588 private-practice jobs at firms of 501 or more lawyers — 33.2 percent of law-firm jobs — at a median of $225,000 on 6,017 reported salaries. The 5 August 2026 press release says those firms hired about 540 fewer graduates than the Class of 2024, and that their share of law-firm jobs fell from 34.2 percent to 33.2 percent. Business, the in-house-adjacent first job, took 2,180 graduates, 6.7 percent of employment-category jobs, at a median of $100,000. That is the entry alternative a general counsel competes with when the candidate is a year out, not when the candidate is a fifth-year on this platform’s last named $365,000 rung. The $225,000 large-firm median is a Class of 2025 starting salary. It does not reset this firm’s December 2023 ladder.

Chambers USA 2026, announced by the firm on 4 June 2026, ranks 155 practices, 35 of them Band 1. Nationwide Labor & Employment is Band 1. The Chambers department page, USA Guide 2026, records a firm-supplied bench of more than 375 lawyers and other professionals in workplace work, with strength in employment and traditional labor, class-action defense, whistleblower and NLRB, and clients described as a large number of Fortune 500 companies. Geographic Band 1 also includes the District of Columbia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas. That is the desk a head of legal at a manufacturer, retailer, carrier or energy operator is actually buying when the associate cash shows up on an invoice.

The US Labor/Management Relations page places that work in defense, education, energy, foodservice, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and transportation, in front of the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the National Mediation Board and the Federal Labor Relations Authority, including Railway Labor Act work for air and rail carriers and more than 50 Taft-Hartley trust funds. Individual Employee Litigation & Arbitration is sold as national or regional employment-counsel arrangements, with alternative fee arrangements, into financial services, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and life sciences, technology, transportation and retail, in state and U.S. federal courts, European employment tribunals, FINRA and the AAA, and before the EEOC, DOL and OFCCP. That is a panel product. It is why a general counsel matching this firm is often hiring an employment counsel or associate general counsel, not a first-year.

Two Board-and-rule facts rewrite 2026 labor demand without creating a lockstep hiring boom. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas vacated the 2023 NLRB joint-employer rule on 8 March 2024. The Board’s final rule published 27 February 2026, effective the same day, restored the 26 February 2020 text: joint-employer status only if an entity possesses and exercises substantial direct and immediate control over essential terms. The 2023–2024 counseling surge for franchise, staffing, private-equity portfolio and contractor models cools because the broader 2023 standard never operated. 2026 work is the narrower 2020 test plus litigation over the facts of “direct and immediate” control. Separately, the Board’s Cemex Construction Materials Pacific decision of 25 August 2023 remains Board law: after a majority-support recognition demand, the employer must recognize and bargain or promptly file an RM petition; election-taint unfair labor practices dismiss the petition and yield a bargaining order. Until the Board or the Supreme Court displaces it, manufacturing, retail and transportation general counsel still buy that advice from NLRB-experienced associates. This firm’s clerkship page says it actively seeks clerks from the NLRB and from FERC.

Two 2024 federal rules that never stuck still leave state-law work. The Northern District of Texas, in Ryan LLC v. FTC on 20 August 2024, set aside the noncompete rule; the Commission voted 3–1 on 5 September 2025 to accede to vacatur. The FTC’s rule page states the noncompete rule is not in effect and is not enforceable. 2026 work shifts to state noncompete statutes, trade-secret and nonsolicit counseling, and case-by-case Section 5 investigations — not a first-year spike. The 2024 DOL overtime salary-threshold rule was vacated nationwide on 15 November 2024 by the Eastern District of Texas. Wage-and-hour associates remain busy on state thresholds and collective actions. The federal January 2025 jump never bound.

California SB 642, covered in the firm’s 5 November 2025 LawFlash, takes effect 1 January 2026: the posted “pay scale” becomes a good-faith estimate of the range the employer reasonably expects to pay upon hire; Equal Pay Act “wages” expand to all forms of pay; the comparison is “another sex”; the limitations period is three years, with damages up to six years of wages. A general counsel posting a California associate or in-house range that assumes a 2026 Milbank match this firm has not announced is not being aggressive. They are misstating the good-faith estimate.

Investment management is the other scaled buyer. The firm’s investment-management page states more than 150 lawyers; counsel to more than 100 registered fund families; more than 750 global hedge, private-equity, broker-dealer and alternative managers; half of the world’s 50 largest hedge funds; more than 70 of the world’s largest institutional investors. More than 40 senior lawyers previously sat at the SEC, IRS, Treasury, DOJ or FINRA. Chambers USA 2026 puts Nationwide Investment Funds: Investor Representation at Band 1. The Fifth Circuit vacated the SEC private-fund adviser package in full on 5 June 2024; the Commission announced the vacatur on 31 October 2024. The firm’s 7 June 2024 alert recorded the SEC’s own estimate of $5.4 billion in cost and millions of hours of employee time. Implementation staffing at advisers and at IM firms unwinds. 2025–2026 demand is secondaries, side letters, exam defense and marketing-rule work. A general counsel at a manager who still budgets for a quarterly-statement factory is buying the wrong seat.

Energy and life sciences are specialist, not volume. The litigation page states close to 1,000 litigators in more than 30 offices, with venues named through the U.S. Supreme Court, the High Court of England and Wales and the Dubai International Financial Centre. The energy page puts conventional, IRA-era, renewable, nuclear and storage work in front of FERC, NERC, the NRC, CISA, DOE, OSHA, EPA and DOJ; client types include public utilities, integrated oil, state-owned entities, independent power producers, private equity and government contractors. Chambers USA 2026 ranks Energy: Nuclear (Regulatory & Litigation) Band 1 Nationwide. The NRC’s 30 May 2025 environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact for reauthorizing Palisades in Covert Township, Michigan, runs the renewed facility operating license through 24 March 2031, with the DOE Loan Programs Office as cooperating agency and an IRA §1706 / Title XVII loan guarantee. Holtec, on 30 August 2026, said fuel loading had begun: Mode 6, 204 assemblies, 805 MWe, not yet commercial operation. That cycle is senior nuclear-regulatory work in Washington, not a first-year lockstep factory.

Life sciences is stated as 1,000+ companies across pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device and related research, with FDA, USDA, DEA and FTC product regulation and Hatch-Waxman and biosimilars work. Chambers USA 2026: Life Sciences Nationwide Band 4; Regulatory/Compliance Band 2 Nationwide; Band 1 Life Sciences New Jersey. The 15 April 2025 White House executive order on drug prices directs HHS to propose guidance for initial price applicability year 2028 and manufacturer effectuation of maximum fair price in 2026, 2027 and 2028; the Inflation Reduction Act negotiation statute is not repealed. Uncertainty itself is billable. It is not a reason to staff first-year lockstep seats in bulk.

Two more 2025 instruments sit in the same budget. Executive Order 14257, 2 April 2025, published 7 April 2025, imposes an additional ad valorem duty on imports from all trading partners starting at 10 percent, then higher Annex I rates. That is mid-level-plus international-trade, CFIUS, customs and supply-chain work from the second quarter of 2025, not a first-year hiring wave. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 28 June 2024, overrules Chevron deference. Every regulatory desk at this platform — NLRB, DOL, FERC, NRC, FDA, SEC, FTC — now litigates whether Congress actually authorized the rule. That is a multi-year structural shift toward senior regulatory litigators and appellate associates, not a class-of-2026 hiring boom. NALP’s Class of 2025 count at firms of 501 or more lawyers is 6,588 jobs, about 540 fewer than the class before, at the same $225,000 median. These dockets do not, on the evidence, create a further first-year spike at this firm.