Salary · Trial boutique economics
Susman Godfrey Salary 2026: Associate Scale, Bonus and Partner Pay
The 2026 market still prices most U.S. trial associates as Cravath-scale lawyers. The Houston-founded boutique's own grid, bonus table and equity-only partnership say that discard is wrong, and the general counsel who retains the trial team is the one who pays it.
The market priced a trial lawyer as a lockstep associate.
Pick the lens that matches the chair you sit in. The 2026 Susman Godfrey salary figure is a published base, a median bonus that lockstep cannot reach, and a general counsel’s retention decision — not a Cravath-scale hours machine.
Above the Law, on 10 June 2026, put the published grid $5,000 to $10,000 above the Milbank scale set the week before and effective 1 July. Legal Business, on 3 June 2026, had Milbank’s first-year at $235,000. The discard is treating that gap as the figure. Base is the courtesy. Bonus is the price.
Sartori & Partners has worked the Houston associate market for eight years. The Houston interview cohort is 275 structured interviews with partners and counsel; the question that opened this page was the general counsel’s: what does this trial seat actually cost, and what does the lockstep miss? Every public number is cited below.
- $2.876M
- Revenue per lawyer in fiscal 2025, second in the Am Law 100, on 226 lawyers.
- Above the Law, 15 April 2026, reading the 2026 Am Law 100
- 91%
- Share of 2024 firmwide revenue taken on alternative fee arrangements, not a billable-hour lockstep.
- Texas Lawbook 50, 30 April 2025
- +23.2%
- Year-over-year revenue growth in 2025 at the Houston-founded trial firm. The dollar is not on a page.
- Law.com Early Look, 20 February 2026
- $4.1M
- 2024 profits per Texas partner on Texas Lawbook's Texas-lawyer measure, not 2025 Am Law PEP.
- Texas Lawbook 50, 30 April 2025
The published Susman Godfrey salary grid, class by class.
Seven rungs, four offices, one number per graduation year. The lockstep column is the discard this page exists to contradict, not a second scale.
The 2026 market still prices most U.S. trial associates as Cravath-scale lawyers. ABA Journal, on 19 November 2025, reported that Cravath would leave 2026 bases at $225,000 through $420,000 for the classes of 2025 through 2019. Milbank then moved first: Legal Business, on 3 June 2026, put the new first-year at $235,000, with $10,000 increases for classes back to 2022 and $20,000 increases for 2021 through 2018, effective 1 July. Biglaw Investor’s compiled 2026 ladder, accessed 11 September 2026, runs $235,000 to $455,000 across eight years. That ladder is the thing a hiring committee still quotes when it prices a trial associate. It is not this firm’s payroll.
The associate-hiring page, accessed 11 September 2026, publishes salaries based on graduation year, subject to adjustments for lateral associates, as a firmwide grid: 2025 $240,000; 2024 $250,000; 2023 $275,000; 2022 $325,000; 2021 $395,000; 2020 $420,000; 2019 $450,000. Above the Law, on 10 June 2026, read that same seven-rung table as $5,000 to $10,000 above the new Milbank rate. No office differential is stated. Houston, New York, Los Angeles and Seattle pay the same base.
| Graduation year | Firm 2026 base | Milbank lockstep | Published gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | $240,000 | $235,000 | +$5,000 |
| 2024 | $250,000 | $245,000 | +$5,000 |
| 2023 | $275,000 | $270,000 | +$5,000 |
| 2022 | $325,000 | $320,000 | +$5,000 |
| 2021 | $395,000 | $385,000 | +$10,000 |
| 2020 | $420,000 | $410,000 | +$10,000 |
| 2019 | $450,000 | $440,000 | +$10,000 |
Incoming associates must complete a federal Article III district or appellate clerkship before they start. One such clerkship pays a $180,000 clerkship bonus; two or more pay $200,000; a prior clerkship bonus paid by another firm is not stacked. Up to $25,000 is advanced on offer acceptance, the rest on start. U.S. Supreme Court clerks receive an additional bonus the careers page describes only as “consistent with market levels,” plus partnership credit; that overlay is not a published dollar and is omitted here. Bar-exam fees, bar dues and reasonable moving expenses are paid. The clerkship cash is a signing overlay, not an annual bonus, and it is the hard gate on the grid: NALP’s Class of 2025 Selected Findings, released 5 August 2026, counted 1,154 federal clerkships out of 3,253 judicial clerkships (10.0 percent of employed graduates). The pool that can clear this gate is the federal-clerk subset, not the all-clerkship share.
The Houston staff-attorney posting on the open-positions page, accessed 11 September 2026, is a different seat: a Texas license, academic credentials described as equivalent to the top half of a University of Texas class, and a “competitive salary” with no dollar. It is not on the associate grid. Posted non-lawyer bands the same day ran $90,000 to $115,000 for a New York legal secretary, $100,000 to $115,000 in Los Angeles, $90,000 to $115,000 for a New York e-filing specialist, and $55,000 to $60,000 for a Seattle administrative assistant.
Milbank first-year base
The lockstep first-year Legal Business recorded on 3 June 2026, effective 1 July 2026.
Legal Business, 3 June 2026 ↗The 2026 market still prices most U.S. trial associates as Cravath-scale lawyers.
The bonus lockstep cannot price.
December 2025 medians ran from $120,000 at the first-year rung to $280,000 at the most senior. The New York scale the firm printed beside its own table is the contrast, not a second payroll.
Firm news dated 16 December 2025 is the last full bonus book on a page. First-year associates received a median of $120,000; the most senior associates received a median of $280,000; bonuses were paid to all associates and to all 287 employees. ABA Journal restated those two medians the next day, 17 December 2025. Partner-year medians, with years at the firm in parentheses, ran 2025 $280,000 (6); 2026 $240,000 (5); 2027 $220,000 (4); 2028 $180,000 (3); 2029 $150,000 (2); 2030 $120,000 (1). Graduation-year medians ran 2016 $280,000; 2017 $270,000; 2018 $240,000; 2019 $210,000; 2020 $200,000; 2021 $150,000; 2022 $120,000; 2023 $130,000. Those are medians for the 2025 bonus year, not means, and not a 2026 run-rate.
The same release reprints the New York year-end-plus-special scale the firm is beating: 2025 $15,000 plus $6,000 prorated; 2024 $20,000 plus $6,000; 2023 $30,000 plus $10,000; 2022 $57,500 plus $15,000; 2021 $75,000 plus $20,000; 2020 $90,000 plus $25,000; 2019 $105,000 plus $25,000; 2018 $115,000 plus $25,000. A first-year median of $120,000 against a $21,000 New York year-end-plus-special is the figure that makes the $5,000 base gap look like a courtesy.
The year behind the peak is public. Texas Lawbook, on 30 April 2025, attributed the 2023 revenue spike of $744 million in part to a handful of large fee collections, with the $787.5 million Fox settlement of Dominion Voting Systems claims the largest. 2024 firmwide revenue then printed at $528 million, which the managing-partner statement on that page called the second-best year in the firm’s history, down 29 percent from 2023 and still above 2022’s $374 million. The bonus table moved with that cycle: first-year medians $150,000, then $110,000, then $120,000. A general counsel reading the 2026 base grid without that cycle will overfit a lockstep raise and miss the inventory year.
A head of legal at a national retailer, speaking inside Sartori’s Houston interview cohort over a 24-month window, described the December table as the number used to test whether outside trial counsel can still keep their people. That is a buyer’s read of a boutique W-2, not an in-house copy of it. Of 26 closed Houston associate searches over three years, 11 were litigation-trial seats where the hiring brief named a clerkship as a hard gate; bonus-year timing showed up as a closing variable on those files, not as a second scale.
| Partnership class | Median bonus |
|---|---|
| 2025 (6 years) | $280,000 |
| 2026 (5 years) | $240,000 |
| 2027 (4 years) | $220,000 |
| 2028 (3 years) | $180,000 |
| 2029 (2 years) | $150,000 |
| 2030 (1 year) | $120,000 |
The general counsel matches this figure. The associate earns it.
The seat that takes the W-2 sits inside the boutique. The desk that funds it sits in a company legal department: a chief legal officer, a head of litigation, sometimes a city attorney as co-counsel.
Company W-2Contingency recovery
- In-house litigation leadership A general counsel or head of litigation who hires a deputy to supervise the panel, not to copy the seventh-year rung onto the company payroll.
- Retained trial team The boutique on contingency, reverse-contingency, hybrid or hourly terms. This is how most companies actually match the figure.
- Certified class or public body Plaintiff recoveries and co-counsel with a city attorney or attorney general. The associate is still on the firm’s W-2.
The employer of the associate scale and of the equity-partner draw is the boutique: four U.S. offices, no non-U.S. seat on the offices page accessed 11 September 2026, a career overview that lists Associates, Summer Associates, Of Counsel and Staff Attorneys. The why-page describes a non-pyramid, more-partners-than-associates structure, weekly firm meetings at which every partner, of counsel and associate has the same vote on case acceptance and hiring, and a spectrum of alternative fees. Named client types on that page, used here as types rather than as a cast list, include Fortune 500 industrials, a national retailer, a supermajor energy company, a ride-hail platform and a major media conglomerate.
That is the buying desk. The Association of Corporate Counsel 2025 Chief Legal Officers Survey, covering 772 CLOs across 20 industries and 48 countries, found 60 percent reporting higher litigation costs, 42 percent more lawsuits, 38 percent more complex litigation, and 44 percent more internal investigations. Among larger companies, antitrust (41 percent) and AI regulatory enforcement (26 percent) led the regulatory worry list. Fifty percent of CLOs at companies with $1 billion-plus revenue planned to hire more in-house lawyers in the same year they were sending more work out. Understaffing was the top departmental barrier; 41 percent of departments had a cost-cutting mandate. The in-house titles being added are department lawyers with business acumen — 59 percent of CLOs named it a top skill — not a six-year equity-trial track.
The associate scale is a single trial-lawyer track. Practice labels live on the docket, not as separate locksteps.
- Credential gate first. A completed Article III clerkship, outstanding academics, and usually law review; applications go to a firm email, not a numbered job req.
- One firmwide grid. Compensation is by graduation year across four offices; there is no published “energy associate” or “AI counsel” split.
- Equity is the only partnership. Typical consideration after six years, five after a Supreme Court clerkship, no promotion quota.
- A vote on the inventory. Associates sit in the weekly case-acceptance meeting. The W-2 is funded by cases the room takes, not by a hours target the careers page does not state.
A general counsel matches this figure as a client, or competes for the same clerks into a Head of Litigation seat. There is no in-house copy of the grid.
- Retain on alternative fees. Fully contingent, reverse-contingent, hybrid, flat, or hourly when the company prefers. Hourly is available; it is not the machine.
- Hire the supervisor, not the rung. Large-company CLOs are adding in-house lawyers and still increasing outside spend. The internal seat is a Head of Litigation who can run the panel.
- Public bodies buy capacity. Firm news dated 15 September 2025 records a filing with the Los Angeles City Attorney as co-plaintiff. The associate on that matter remains on the boutique W-2.
- Class recoveries pay plaintiff inventory. Authors, home sellers, privacy-app users and royalty owners do not put a seventh-year figure on a payroll. They fund it through the fee.
| Arrangement | What the company is buying | Who carries the downside |
|---|---|---|
| Fully contingent | Plaintiff trial where winning is the fee | The firm |
| Reverse contingent | Defense trial where a loss would be existential | The firm |
| Hybrid (reduced hourly or fixed plus kicker) | Shared risk on a bet-the-company docket | Split |
| Hourly | The file the general counsel prefers to keep on a clock | The company |
A general counsel at a Houston energy operator, inside the same 24-month interview window, told us the $450,000 seventh-year figure is not a number put on the company payroll — it is a number the company retains. In that Houston interview cohort, 64 of 91 respondents sitting as general counsel, chief legal officer or head of litigation at energy, industrial or platform companies over the same window said they price a trial boutique against the verdict, not against the associate lockstep. Thirty-eight of those 91 said they would not copy a seventh-year $450,000 rung onto an in-house W-2.
A general counsel matches this figure by retaining the trial team, not by putting $450,000 on an in-house W-2.
Susman Godfrey partner salary is equity, not a published PEP.
The partnership is all equity, the 2025 profits-per-partner dollar is not on a page, and revenue per lawyer is the public proxy a general counsel can actually cite.
Clerkship gateFull equity
- Article III clerkship A completed federal district or appellate clerkship before the associate starts. The gate sits in front of the grid, not beside it.
- Associate, typically six years Considered for partnership after six years with the firm, five after a U.S. Supreme Court clerkship. No published quota.
- Equity only Every partner is a full equity partner. There is no non-equity rung on the careers page, and no published individual draw.
Firm news dated 17 December 2024 recorded seven new equity partners and a partnership that had crossed more than 100 all-equity partners. Firm news dated 16 December 2025 recorded six more elections, one in Houston, three in New York, one in Los Angeles and one in Seattle. That is a promotion cadence, not a profits-per-partner dollar. Above the Law’s 15 April 2026 read of the 2026 Am Law 100 placed the firm second in revenue per lawyer at $2.876 million, up 20.39 percent, with 226 lawyers; Wachtell sat first at $5.085 million on 272 lawyers. Am Law 100 PEP as a cohort rose 14 percent in 2025. This firm is not in Above the Law’s published PEP top ten, which ran from Wachtell at $12.152 million through Milbank at $7.620 million, and a 2025 firmwide PEP dollar is therefore omitted.
Texas Lawbook, on 30 April 2025, is the last page with a profits figure attached to a dollar: $4.1 million profits per partner on a Texas-lawyer measure, $1.6 million revenue per Texas lawyer, 115 of 220 lawyers officing in Texas, $185 million of the $528 million 2024 firmwide revenue from Texas lawyers. That Texas PPP is not Am Law firmwide PEP. Law.com’s Early Look on 20 February 2026 then recorded 2025 revenue up 23.2 percent and PEP up 19.2 percent without printing either dollar. Multiplying 23.2 percent onto $528 million would invent a 2025 revenue figure this page will not carry.
Headcount is a band, not a point. Texas Lawbook’s FY 2024 snapshot is about 220 lawyers, 115 of them in Texas. Above the Law’s FY 2025 Am Law 100 read is 226 lawyers. The firm’s own all-employee census ran 270 including 131 non-attorneys (12 December 2023), 286 (17 December 2024) and 287 (16 December 2025). Associate headcount by class year and by office is not public. Individual partner draws are not public. Realization rates and hours requirements are not stated on the careers page. Those gaps are the ones a candidate or a general counsel should treat as diligence, not as mystique.
Sartori’s Houston mapping covers about 11,000 lawyers. That coverage figure is a density read of the market this boutique hires from and this general counsel buys in; it is not a census of the firm. Our own file does not see partner draws, and a page that pretended otherwise would be selling a number we do not have.
The inventory that funds the W-2.
The 2026 pay figure is not a lockstep courtesy. It is funded by a docket that statutes, executive orders and trial-level rulings either opened or tried to close.
N.D. Cal. granted final approval of the Anthropic copyright settlement on 20 July 2026. The order on final approval (Dkt. 680) records a non-reversionary $1.5 billion fund covering about 500,000 works at about $3,000 per work, and awards class counsel $101,561,111 in fees — about 6.8 percent of the fund — plus $2,635,197.46 in expenses and an $18,220,000 cost reserve. That fee is a class-counsel aggregate, not a disclosed take-home for this firm. Judge Alsup’s 23 June 2025 fair-use split, as indexed by the U.S. Copyright Office, is the ruling that created the pirate-library docket: training on purchased copies can be fair use; a pirated library is not. The Copyright Office’s Part 3 pre-publication report of 9 May 2025 left licensing versus unlicensed training unresolved and declined to opine on pending cases. S.D.N.Y. largely denied the OpenAI and Microsoft motions to dismiss in the newspaper-publisher suit on 4 April 2025. The AI practice page still lists OpenAI/Microsoft, Nvidia, Databricks and Perplexity as live inventory. A settlement in one case is not a hiring freeze in the others.
The $425 million Google privacy verdict, after a nearly three-week trial in Rodriguez (N.D. Cal., 5 September 2025 firm report), followed class certification in 2024 and a summary-judgment denial in 2025. The $1.6 billion BML Properties judgment after an 11-day New York County bench trial (22 October 2024) was affirmed in full by the Appellate Division, First Department, on 15 April 2025. The NAR $418 million settlement announced 20 March 2024, payable in four annual installments plus interest, sat on top of $208.5 million already reached with Anywhere Real Estate, RE/MAX and Keller Williams. DOJ’s 24 November 2024 statement of interest in Burnett recorded an open investigation and independent antitrust concerns with the buyer-agreement-before-tour rule. Antitrust work did not end with the check.
Plaintiff trial inventoryDefense trial inventory
- Copyright, privacy, commissions AI-training piracy, platform privacy classes, real-estate commission antitrust. The plaintiff trial team that a publisher, author class or home-seller class actually retains.
- Commercial fraud and construction State-court bench trials and affirmances. The general counsel of an operating company on either side of a bet-the-company commercial file.
- Energy defense Natural Gas Act field preemption and FERC-occupied wholesale sales. Houston remains the historic seat; the Tenth Circuit just moved a consumer-class theory off the table.
The Tenth Circuit, on 6 July 2026, held that Kansas Consumer Protection Act claims by residential consumers against interstate wholesalers arising from Winter Storm Uri are field-preempted by the Natural Gas Act. That is energy-defense demand for Houston trial partners and mid-levels who can brief NGA and FERC preemption; it does not retire royalty, joint-operating-agreement, midstream or power-contract work. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, in Judicial Business 2025 for the year ending 30 September 2025, recorded 303,563 civil filings, up 4 percent from 290,896; federal-question cases 157,421, up 12 percent; diversity filings 96,548, down 7 percent; civil appeals 22,812, up 7 percent. That is the pool, not this firm’s census, and it is heavier on federal-question work — IP, antitrust, statutory class actions — than on diversity commercial.
April 2025 tried to take the machine offline. Executive Order 14263, 9 April 2025, directed agencies to suspend security clearances at the firm, cease providing government goods and SCIFs, require contractors to disclose business with the firm, and limit official engagement. A D.D.C. temporary restraining order issued 15 April 2025; a permanent injunction issued 27 June 2025. Reuters, that day, reported the court held the order retaliated for protected representation and diversity expression. The government appealed, moved in March 2026 to dismiss the appeal, then moved to withdraw that dismissal. For a general counsel whose company holds federal contracts, “will the firm still exist” was a panel question dated to the TRO window, not to September 2026. After 27 June 2025, “will try the government” became a buying criterion rather than an extinction risk.
GAO-25-107214 records no nationwide federal disclosure rule for third-party litigation finance. Contingency remains about two-thirds of this firm’s 2025 mix on the Early Look record. Associates who work funded inventory should expect more disclosure fights in some districts; the weekly vote on new cases is where that risk is taken, not on the associate scale.
A general counsel buying this inventory in 2026 is not buying a practice-group lockstep. The careers pages do not post numbered antitrust-associate or energy-associate requisitions. Hiring is into one trial-lawyer associate track; the labels that actually carry the 2024 to 2026 docket are commercial trial, antitrust, copyright and generative-AI training data, privacy class actions, energy (upstream, midstream, power), intellectual property and trade secrets, and employment class-action defense. Compensation does not split by those labels. The buyer who needs a Winter Storm Uri preemption brief and the buyer who needs a pirate-library class both pay the same published grid. What they are buying is a trial team that will take the case on alternative fees, not a Cravath-scale associate who will staff a document review at $240,000.
Design the search from the figure, not from the lockstep.
An associate earns this grid. A general counsel matches it. Sartori's Houston associate desk has eight years on that distinction, and the clock does not always obey the headline band.
We have worked the Houston associate market for eight years, for law-firm litigation groups and for the companies that hire the same clerkship-credentialed lawyers into in-house trial seats. Over the trailing three years we closed 26 associate searches at a 93 percent completion rate, on a typical timeline of 6 to 12 weeks, with counter-offer incidence at 34 percent and a median of 8 working days from offer to signature.
Of those 26 closed files, 11 were litigation-trial seats at boutiques or litigation groups where the hiring brief named an Article III clerkship as a hard gate. Seven of those 11 completed inside the 6-to-12-week band. Four ran past 12 weeks because the clerk class had not yet sat, and our Houston associate desk cannot manufacture a start date the clerkship year has not released. That is the number that cuts against the easy story: the 8-day offer-to-acceptance clock starts after the clerk is free to start, not when the offer letter is drafted. The remaining 15 files split as 8 energy-adjacent commercial associate seats and 7 general commercial seats; none of those subsets exceeds the 26.
The company-side version of the same talent is not a copy of the grid. A PE-backed industrial platform in the Houston orbit came to us for a Head of Litigation after three years of sending bet-the-company work to a trial boutique and deciding the board wanted a supervisor on the payroll. That search is in-house, not inside the 26. It competed for the same clerkship-credentialed mid-levels the boutique hires, at a number that did not try to match $450,000, on a brief that named panel management and a live-witness hearing as the work. The general counsel who opened it already knew the boutique figure; the question was whether to keep matching it as a client or to hire the person who sits across from it.
Pipeline seats that feed the associate track, and that are not the scale, are public. The summer program runs four weeks for 2Ls and pre-clerkship 3Ls; as of the 11 September 2026 check the 2027 window had closed. The 1L Diversity Fellowship pays $5,000 on acceptance for two weeks. The Susman Godfrey Prize pays $4,000 plus mentoring to 1L and 2L students of color at eligible schools. Executive Order 14263 named a students-of-color prize as a predicate; the 27 June 2025 injunction bars giving effect to that order. A general counsel or a law-school career office should not treat April 2025 as a cancellation of the Prize unless a later un-enjoined rule says so.
A chief legal officer who has to match this figure in 2026 has three honest briefs, and mixing them is how searches stall. The first is retain: keep the boutique on contingency or hybrid terms for the file that would actually be tried, and stop asking an in-house commercial lawyer to become a trial lawyer in a quarter. The second is hire the supervisor: a Head of Litigation or deputy general counsel who can run the panel, sit in the live-witness hearing, and tell the board whether the outside team is earning the bonus table. That seat will not carry a $450,000 seventh-year W-2; it will carry a company band and a mandate to spend the boutique figure only where the verdict is the product. The third is hire the clerk: compete for the same Article III class into an in-house trial seat, knowing the federal-clerk pool already named above is the gate this boutique requires before the associate grid even starts. Those three briefs have different clocks. Retain can start in weeks. The supervisor hire runs on our Houston in-house timeline when it is in-house. The clerk hire waits on a sitting year the way four of our eleven clerkship-gated associate files waited.
For a chief legal officer filling a trial-adjacent seat in Houston, the service view of the in-house book sits on our Houston in-house counsel recruiting page. For a litigation group hiring the clerkship-gated associate, the associate-line process sits on Houston associate recruiting. Companies building a legal function rather than adding a seat should start with the first general counsel guide before they try to match a boutique W-2. The lockstep this page contradicts is documented on the 2026 BigLaw associate salary scale; this page owns the boutique figure, not that ladder.
| Office | Docket the seat actually sits on | Buyer type |
|---|---|---|
| Houston | Energy, royalty, midstream, power, historic headquarters; the only staff-attorney discovery seat | Operators, mineral owners, midstream companies, municipal utilities, commodity traders |
| New York | Funds, insurance, banking, publisher and author AI-copyright inventory | Asset managers, publishers, banks, PE sponsors, a newspaper plaintiff |
| Los Angeles | Studios, entertainment employment, city-attorney co-counsel, IP trial | Media conglomerates, a city attorney as co-plaintiff, entertainment employers |
| Seattle | Technology, trade secrets, VC and crypto, Ninth Circuit IP | Platforms, venture-backed companies, chip and cloud defendants on the AI docket |
Susman Godfrey compensation in 2026: questions from both sides of the figure
What is the 2026 Susman Godfrey salary for associates?
The firmwide 2026 grid runs from $240,000 for the class of 2025 to $450,000 for the class of 2019. The careers page, accessed 11 September 2026, publishes those seven rungs as base cash by graduation year, firmwide across Houston, New York, Los Angeles and Seattle, and subject to adjustments for laterals. It is not bonus and it is not total compensation. Above the Law, on 10 June 2026, put the same grid $5,000 to $10,000 above the Milbank lockstep that had just reset the rest of the market.
How large is the Susman Godfrey bonus against the New York scale?
In December 2025 the firm paid a $120,000 median bonus to first-year associates and $280,000 to the most senior. Firm news dated 16 December 2025 states those medians were paid to all associates and to all 287 employees. Beside that table the firm reprinted the New York year-end-plus-special scale it was beating: $15,000 plus $6,000 prorated at the junior rung, up to $115,000 plus $25,000 at the senior end. The 2026 bonus year has not been published; treat the December 2025 medians as last year’s book, not a guarantee.
What is Susman Godfrey partner salary in 2026?
All partners are full equity; the firm has not published a 2025 firmwide profits-per-partner dollar. The associate-hiring page, accessed 11 September 2026, says associates are typically considered after six years, or five after a U.S. Supreme Court clerkship, with no promotion quota. Texas Lawbook, on 30 April 2025, put 2024 profits per Texas partner at $4.1 million on a Texas-lawyer measure that is not Am Law PEP. Law.com’s Early Look on 20 February 2026 recorded PEP up 19.2 percent in 2025 without printing the dollar.
Do Houston, New York, Los Angeles and Seattle pay the same associate scale?
Yes. The careers page publishes one firmwide grid with no office differential. Offices listed as of 11 September 2026 are Houston, New York (One Manhattan West), Los Angeles and Seattle. What changes by city is the docket — energy and royalty in Houston, funds and publisher AI work in New York, studios and city-attorney co-counsel in Los Angeles, technology and trade secrets in Seattle — not the W-2.
How does a general counsel match this figure without putting it on the payroll?
By retaining the trial team on contingency, reverse-contingency or hybrid fees rather than hiring the $450,000 seventh-year in-house. Texas Lawbook recorded 91 percent of 2024 firm revenue from alternative fees; Law.com’s Early Look said about two-thirds of 2025 work ran on contingency. The Association of Corporate Counsel 2025 CLO Survey found 43 percent of chief legal officers sending more work to firms and 50 percent of large-company CLOs still hiring in-house lawyers in the same planning year.
What does a federal clerkship add to the 2026 package?
One Article III clerkship pays a $180,000 bonus; two or more pay $200,000, neither stacked on another firm’s prior clerkship bonus. The associate-hiring page requires a completed federal district or appellate clerkship before an incoming associate starts, advances up to $25,000 of the clerkship bonus on offer acceptance, and pays bar fees, dues and reasonable moving costs. That overlay is signing cash, not an annual bonus.
Firm careers pages, Am Law feeds, docket orders and CLO survey data.
Associate bases and clerkship bonuses come from the employer's own careers page. Bonus medians come from firm news. Partner economics come from Texas Lawbook, Law.com's Early Look and Above the Law's Am Law 100 read-out. Capital events come from court orders and firm win pages.
Sources and further reading
34 references- Sartori & Partners — Houston Legal Talent Research Programme (275 structured interviews; ~11,000 lawyers mapped; quarterly surveys since 2019; mandate telemetry) sartoriglobal.com ↗
- Associate Hiring | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Susman Godfrey Once Again Tops Market Bonuses, Elects Six New Partners Across All Four Office Locations | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Susman Godfrey Tops Market Bonuses in Firm's Second-Biggest Year Ever, Elects 7 New Partners Bringing the Firm to More Than 100 All-Equity Partners | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Susman Godfrey Triples Top Market Bonuses in Historic Year for Firm | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Elite Litigation Powerhouse Susman Godfrey Goes Above Market On Associate Pay — Above the Law abovethelaw.com ↗
- Milbank bumps associate pay to $235k as McDermott becomes first firm to match – Legal Business legalbusiness.co.uk ↗
- Biglaw Salary Scale + Bonuses (1968 - 2026) – Biglaw Investor biglawinvestor.com ↗
- Cravath kicks off associate bonus season and other firms follow — ABA Journal abajournal.com ↗
- Susman Godfrey shatters BigLaw bonus scale, paying senior associates up to $280K — ABA Journal abajournal.com ↗
- The 2026 Am Law 100 Is Out, And Surprise: The Rich Law Firms Got Richer — Above the Law abovethelaw.com ↗
- An Early Look: The 2026 Am Law 200 Financials | Law.com law.com ↗
- Texas Lawbook 50 -- Susman Godfrey Scores 'Second Best Year Ever' in 2024 texaslawbook.net ↗
- Offices | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Why Susman Godfrey | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Order on Final Approval, Bartz v. Anthropic, N.D. Cal. Dkt. 680 susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Court Grants Final Approval of Historic $1.5 Billion AI Copyright Settlement | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Susman Godfrey Secures $425 Million Jury Verdict for Plaintiffs in Privacy Litigation Against Google | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Susman Godfrey Secures $1.6 Billion Judgment for BML Properties in Baha Mar Fraud Case | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Susman Godfrey Secures Affirmation of $1.6 Billion Win for BML Properties | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Susman Godfrey Announces $418M Settlement with the National Association of Realtors | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Judicial Business 2025 — Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts uscourts.gov ↗
- 2025 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey Key Findings acc.com ↗
- The Association of Corporate Counsel and FTI Consulting Release Findings From Annual Chief Legal Officers Survey fticonsulting.com ↗
- Employment for the Class of 2025 — NALP Selected Findings, 5 August 2026 nalp.org ↗
- ADDRESSING RISKS FROM SUSMAN GODFREY / Executive Order 14263 whitehouse.gov ↗
- U.S. law firm Susman Godfrey defeats Trump executive order | Reuters reuters.com ↗
- Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, 787 F. Supp. 3d 1007 (N.D. Cal. 2025) — U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index copyright.gov ↗
- Opinion, The New York Times Company v. Microsoft Corporation, S.D.N.Y., 4 April 2025 cdn.openai.com ↗
- Statement of Interest of the United States, Burnett v. NAR — 24 November 2024 justice.gov ↗
- In re: Winter Storm Uri Natural Gas Litigation, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, 6 July 2026 ca10.uscourts.gov ↗
- Open Positions | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Artificial Intelligence | Susman Godfrey L.L.P. susmangodfrey.com ↗
- Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 3: Generative AI Training Pre-Publication Version — U.S. Copyright Office copyright.gov ↗
Associate bases and clerkship bonuses are taken from the firm's careers page as accessed 11 September 2026. Bonus medians are firm news dated 16 December 2025, 17 December 2024 and 12 December 2023. Am Law growth rates are the 20 February 2026 Early Look. Revenue per lawyer is Above the Law's 15 April 2026 read of the 2026 Am Law 100. Texas Lawbook 50 figures are dated 30 April 2025. A 2025 firmwide profits-per-partner dollar is not on a page and is omitted. Class-counsel fees in Bartz are an aggregate award, not a disclosed firm take-home.
Our own numbers — the Houston interview cohort, the associate-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 survey waves running since 2019 and the mapping coverage behind every Sartori figure quoted above.
Adjacent maps for the same two readers.
BigLaw Associate Salary Scale 2026
The lockstep this boutique steps over: the 2026 Milbank market ladder from $235,000 to $455,000, which still prices most U.S. trial associates.
See the 2026 lockstepIn-House Counsel Recruiting in Houston
For the general counsel who matches this figure by hiring a Head of Litigation rather than sending every trial out: the Houston in-house desk.
See the Houston in-house deskAssociate Recruiting in Houston
The associate-line search this page's Houston telemetry sits on: clerkship-gated trial seats, counter-offers, and a six-to-twelve-week clock.
See Houston associate searchA quiet conversation
Matching a trial-boutique figure on a company payroll?
We map Houston associate and in-house litigation talent against the published boutique economics, and we are as willing to tell a general counsel to retain the team as to open a search. Confidential, no obligation.