Vinson & Elkins Salary 2026: Associate Scale, Bonus and Partner Pay

That grid is lockstep base for U.S. associates at this firm, not total cash and not a confirmed 2026 scale. Class of 2023 prints at $225,000; class of 2022 at $235,000; class of 2021 at $260,000; class of 2020 at $310,000; class of 2019 at $365,000; class of 2018 at $390,000; class of 2017 at $420,000; class of 2016 and earlier at $435,000. Those eight cells are the last V&E-specific U.S. associate bases in the legal press.

On June 2, 2026, Above the Law reported Milbank raising associate bases $10,000 to $20,000 by class year, effective July 1, 2026. Law360 Pulse, the same afternoon, stated new floors of $235,000 and a senior cell as high as $455,000. Biglaw Investor’s 2026 table, accessed September 11, 2026, lists the post-raise market ladder as first-year $235,000 through eighth-year $455,000. That is the market-leading U.S. lockstep after June 2026. It is not Vinson & Elkins’ confirmed 2026 cells.

A Houston-headquartered Am Law platform matched that new scale effective July 1, 2026 for associates billing 1,900 hours, as Above the Law reported on July 1, 2026: class of 2026 $235,000 through class of 2018 $455,000. Vinson & Elkins is not on that page. Name the contrast; do not read it as a V&E match.

Class years are the labels on the December 2023 memo. A firm counts seniority by graduation year, so class of 2023 is the most junior cell on that grid. Figures: Above the Law, December 1, 2023.

ERCOT’s June 18, 2026 news release said the PUCT had approved a batch process for large-user connection requests of 75 MW and greater, the first ISO in the nation to do so. ERCOT was tracking more than 438,000 MW of large-load requests, nearly 89 percent from data centers, against an all-time peak of 85,508 MW on August 10, 2023. Classification notices were expected in August 2026; a statewide transmission plan in fall 2027; Batch 1 applications in summer 2027. Optional pathways include on-site generation and curtailment. Islanded facilities with no grid connection generally fall outside ERCOT interconnection but may still face PUCT registration. The hiring consequence through fall 2027 is energy-regulatory, electric-power, real-estate and project-finance counsel and mid-to-senior associates — at Houston firms and at IOU commercial desks — not a first-year generalist.

The same calendar day, FERC issued tailored show-cause orders under Federal Power Act Section 206 to PJM, MISO, SPP, CAISO, ISO-NE and NYISO and their transmission owners. ERCOT is outside that set. The orders gave a 60-day clock to justify tariffs or propose changes, covering study processes, cost-shift prevention, co-location and behind-the-meter generation, new transmission services for flexible large loads, and generating facilities serving electrically proximate large loads. Houston energy-desk lawyers who paper SPP- or MISO-adjacent Permian and Gulf loads, co-located generation, and hyperscaler PPAs need FERC electric specialists in parallel with the ERCOT Batch Zero track. The first-year cell does not distinguish the two grids.

Generator interconnection is a third queue. White & Case / JD Supra, August 21, 2026, reported that the D.C. Circuit in Advanced Energy United v. FERC, July 31, 2026, denied petitions challenging FERC Order No. 2023. The court noted roughly 2,600 GW of proposed capacity in queues at end-2023 and still over 2,060 GW by end-2025. That is FERC-jurisdictional generation, including gas-to-power and co-located plants serving data centers. It is not ERCOT load Batch Zero.

FERC’s LNG page, accessed September 11, 2026, still prices the Gulf export desk as a certificate practice: siting and construction of onshore and near-shore LNG import and export facilities under Natural Gas Act Section 3, Section 7 certificates for LNG facilities in interstate pipeline transportation, and 27 operational LNG facilities currently under FERC regulation. That work sits with projects and energy-regulatory partners and specialists, plus London English-law offtake. First-year scale does not price NGA Sections 3 and 7.

Commercial disputes pulled toward Houston on a different statute. Texas H.B. 40, signed June 20, 2025 and effective September 1, 2025, dropped the Business Court amount-in-controversy and qualified-transaction thresholds from $10 million to $5 million and moved Montgomery County into the Eleventh Division in Houston, as Foley & Lardner summarized on June 30, 2025. Norton Rose Fulbright’s April 2026 18-month update counted 185 cases in the court’s first year, almost half in the Eleventh Division, and 141 more filings from September 1, 2025 through February 28, 2026, 64 of them in Houston. Gibson Dunn’s January 2026 Year One paper put Houston and Dallas together at 127 of 181 first-year filings. Dallas is the neighbouring division and the neighbouring listing venue — the SEC approved the Texas Stock Exchange on September 30, 2025; this page does not explain that market. S.B. 29, effective May 14, 2025, lets Texas governing documents require exclusive Texas forum and a jury-trial waiver. The seats those bills consume are commercial-litigation and energy-contract partners, trial associates, and in-house general counsel writing forum clauses.

Tax and environmental desks moved on federal clocks the lockstep ignores. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025, rewrites IRA energy credits and FEOC screens, with placed-in-service cliffs through 2027, as Holland & Knight summarized on July 7, 2025: compressed wind and solar 45Y/48E paths, 45V hydrogen termination after December 31, 2027, 45X wind components after that date, 45Z through 2029 with feedstock changes, 45Q and 45U largely retained with FEOC limits, and 100 percent bonus depreciation for property acquired and placed in service after January 19, 2025, not available to certain utilities. EPA’s May 2024 Subpart W fact sheet put most GHGRP revisions effective January 1, 2025, with reporting-year 2025 due March 31, 2026. Those are tax, project-finance and environmental counsel seats. They are not a first-year raise.

The cyclical overlay is upstream capital, not lockstep. Enverus Intelligence Research, August 5, 2026, printed U.S. upstream deal value of $9.1 billion in the second quarter of 2026, 76 percent down quarter-on-quarter and 33 percent down year-on-year, with more than 40 percent of second-quarter value from the Bureau of Land Management’s New Mexico lease sale of over $4 billion. The Dallas Fed Energy Survey, released June 24, 2026 from a June 9–17 field of 127 energy firms, put the business-activity index at 46.1, the capital-expenditures index at 40.9 with 49 percent of firms reporting increased spending, and the expected-capex-next-year index at 0. World Oil, September 10, 2026, summarizing the EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook, had U.S. crude on track to average a record 13.8 million barrels a day in 2026, Permian output at 6.8 million, and WTI at $84 a barrel through August 2026 against $65 in 2025. Energy M&A associates in years 3 to 6 move with announced deal value on a lag. A zero next-year capex index is a 2027 caution for that same mid-level. It is not a reason to hire or fire on the first-year number.

The firm itself publishes two data-center deal series that must not be averaged. A February 26, 2026 news item, reporting what was told to The American Lawyer, said the firm’s attorneys handled more than 100 data-center transactions in that space. A May 14, 2026 news item and PR Newswire release said that in the last two years the firm signed or closed more than 75 data-center and power transactions totaling approximately $125 billion, with the Data Center Practice advising in more than 30 jurisdictions. Those are different metrics. Report both as published.

Brief the search in four lines and no more. Name the desk (energy M&A, projects, PUCT rate, FERC electric, LNG certificate, data-center power). Name the seniority (years 3–6, years 7–8, counsel, AGC). Name the bar (any U.S. jurisdiction for pure in-house under Rule 5.05(c); Texas admission for Business Court, PUCT or Railroad Commission appearances). Name the cell you will actually pay (a 2024 mid-level base, a 2025 bonus policy, an employer AGC band) and the cell you will not (the $225,000 first-year lockstep as a ceiling). A company that cannot name those four has not opened a search. It has opened a campus screen.

The service view of the associate book sits on our Houston associate recruiting page. Company-side AGC and chief legal officer seats sit on Houston in-house counsel recruiting. Statewide pay context, a different intent, is on lawyer salary in Texas for 2026. The research program behind the Houston cohort, the mapping coverage and the mandate telemetry is set out on our research page.