Weil Gotshal salary 2026: the last public cell, the bonus, and partner PEP

The assigned question on this page is a 2026 question. The honest answer opens on an absence. Above the Law's 2026 associate-raise scorecard lists 27 named-firm rows and does not list Weil. The latest raise row is Troutman Pepper Locke on 17 September 2026; the latest special-bonus row is Cahill Gordon on 24 September 2026. Sullivan & Cromwell is on that list, dated 26 June 2026. Weil is not. David Lat, writing on 18 June 2026, had already omitted Weil from the early Am Law 100 names he gave: Milbank, McDermott Will & Schulte, Quinn Emanuel, Katten, and Susman Godfrey. A 27 July 2026 Above the Law piece said the bulk of Biglaw had yet to match. The September scorecard is the later record, and Weil is still absent.

What a general counsel can put in a board paper is therefore narrower, and more useful, than a guessed 2026 ladder. Bloomberg Law reported on 5 December 2023 that Weil, with Ropes & Gray and White & Case, was matching a scale from $225,000 for first years to $435,000 for most senior associates, and that Weil's new salary scale would go into effect on 1 January, in a Monday email the publication had viewed. That is lockstep U.S. associate base pay by class year, in its 2024 vintage. It is not all-in cash, not counsel, and not partner draw.

The dollar steps are Weil's own, and they are 2024 steps. Above the Law on 4 December 2023 reproduced the Management Committee memo sent that afternoon: bases effective 1 January 2024 of class of 2023 $225,000, class of 2022 $235,000, class of 2021 $260,000, class of 2020 $310,000, class of 2019 $365,000, class of 2018 $390,000, class of 2017 $420,000, and class of 2016 and more senior $435,000. Bloomberg Law the next day reported the same floor and ceiling. The memo said salary increases for elevation in class year are paid with the bonus and made retroactive to 1 January. The 22 November 2024 memo repeated that rule. Weil has not published a later base grid, so the same dollar steps, moved forward by that rule, put the class of 2025 on $225,000 and the class of 2018 and more senior on $435,000. That is class progression on a 2024 scale, not a 2026 Weil letter. The ABA Journal on 19 November 2025 restated Cravath's bases for 1 January 2026, and they were still this ladder, before Milbank moved the market on 2 June 2026. The market-wide lockstep that moved in June lives on the BigLaw associate salary scale for 2026 and on the Cravath scale page; this article does not restate it as Weil's.

Class labels are the 4 December 2023 dollar steps after that memo's elevation rule, aligned to the 2025 bonus season (class of 2025 on the junior rung). A 2026 first-year sits on the same $225,000 base unless Weil publishes a match. Above the Law's 2026 raise scorecard, through 17 September 2026, does not list one. See sources.

Weil's 2024 profits per equity partner were $5,371,000 across 173 equity partners, in the 2025 Am Law tables. Wikipedia's Global 200 reproduction, citing Law.com International and retrieved 27 September 2025, carries the same PEP cell alongside 1,228 lawyers. The 17 April 2025 Am Law 100 PEP ranking put Weil at rank 15, with a 15.63 percent rise from 2023. Direct Law.com access to those ranking URLs timed out behind sign-in; the dollar cells also appear on the Global 200 table citing the 18 September 2025 Global 100 PEP ranking. Average PEP divides a pool. A rainmaker's draw can sit well above it, and a service partner's well below. Individual draws are not public.

Weil-specific 2025-performance Am Law cells — the 2026 report — were not public as of 30 September 2026 and are omitted here rather than inferred; every Weil partner-economics figure on this page is 2024 performance. The 2026 Am Law 100 cohort averages that Above the Law reported on 15 April 2026, and that David Lat restated on 30 April 2026, put Am Law 100 gross at $178.95 billion (up 13.0 percent), PEP at $3.59 million (up 14.0 percent), RPL at $1.39 million (up 8.7 percent), and attorney headcount at 128,868 (up about 4 percent), all on 2025 performance. Nonequity partners grew almost 7 percent against 2 percent equity growth. Those are industry-capacity figures. They do not name Weil in the top-ten PEP or RPL lists, and they are not a substitute for a missing Weil row.

Year-over-year, the 2023 gross cited by Above the Law on 22 November 2024 was $1,829,486,000, rank 26 on that year's Am Law 100. The 2025 gross-revenue ranking snippet recorded the subsequent step as 10.66 percent, rank 27, for 2024. Global Legal Post, on 26 November 2025, rounded the same year to “revenue of $2.02bn” and “profit per equity partner was $5.4m.” Treat $5.4 million as that publication's rounding of the $5,371,000 ALM cell, not a second measurement.

The 2026 partner class tells you where the firm is putting equity, which is the hiring-weighted read a general counsel actually needs. Of the 17 partners elected effective 1 January 2026, Global Legal Post recorded 11 in corporate, of which seven private equity / M&A, two banking and finance, one private funds, one regulatory transactions; four litigation (three complex commercial, one antitrust); two tax / executive compensation and benefits. Offices in that class included Boston, Dallas, London, Munich, New York, Paris, Silicon Valley, and Washington, D.C. ILRG's 2025 profile put 285 partners against the 1,228-attorney cut — equity plus nonequity — which is a different denominator from the 173 equity partners in the Am Law PEP row. Do not blend them.

Bloomberg Law, on 8 September 2026, quoted a Weil spokesman: 51 lateral partners hired since the start of 2025, including a combined 18 from Simpson Thacher and Latham, and 39 partners added in the prior year, the most in firm history. The same item recorded 2026 private-equity partners leaving Weil for Paul Weiss, DLA Piper, and McDermott Will & Emery, and Simpson Thacher taking New York private-funds and London energy and infrastructure M&A partners. Three days later, on 11 September 2026, Bloomberg Law reported that the chair of the 600-lawyer corporate practice had resigned and was expected to join Cravath with an M&A group. Weil's statement, in that coverage, was that the team was leaving for a smaller platform and that Weil intended to accelerate growth. Do not read an associate-headcount number out of those sentences; the public record does not yet measure openings.

Succession is dated. Weil, on 17 March 2026, named an incoming executive partner — then co-managing partner, co-head of U.S. private equity, and Boston co-managing partner — to take the role on 1 January 2027. The current executive partner chairs the management committee through year-end 2027, then retires from the partnership at the mandatory retirement age and becomes part-time Senior Counsel on 1 January 2028, including lateral partner recruitment. That is a 2026–2028 partner-and-counsel hiring window, with private-equity and Boston gravity in the incoming seat, not a first-year volume story.

Sartori & Partners maps approximately 67,000 lawyers in New York. The global research program behind that coverage has run quarterly market surveys since 2019 and maps 1,480,000+ lawyer profiles worldwide. Findings below come from that same New York cohort and from mandate telemetry on the 33 closed associate files. lead="Sartori has worked the New York associate market since 2017. Over the trailing three years we closed 33 associate searches on that line, at a 93 percent completion rate, on a typical 6-to-12-week timeline.">

Sartori & Partners maps approximately 67,000 lawyers in New York. The global research program behind that coverage has run quarterly market surveys since 2019 and maps 1,480,000+ lawyer profiles worldwide. Findings below come from that same New York cohort and from mandate telemetry on the 33 closed associate files.

Of 33 closed New York associate searches over three years, 14 were company-side private-equity, M&A, finance, or restructuring seats where the hiring general counsel asked us to price against a named Am Law 50 lockstep cell. Across that cohort, 61 of 88 general counsel and heads of legal at PE sponsors, banks, and public companies over a 24-month window named the published class-year cell as the first number they needed when hiring a Weil-trained mid-level, not an in-house survey. Our New York associate mandate telemetry records a 37 percent counter-offer incidence on those 33 closed files, and a median of 11 working days from offer to signature.

Two clocks sit on every company-side brief. Search time-to-fill on this New York associate line is typically 6 to 12 weeks. Offer-to-acceptance, once the number is right, is 11 working days. Companies that confuse the two clocks — that spend the first ten weeks assembling a shortlist and then open a compensation debate in week eleven — are the ones that meet the firm's counter. The special-bonus layer is not a closing flourish. It is a line on the term sheet in week one, next to the class-year base, with the tracker hours cell quoted as none. A chief legal officer who wants a conservative case also prices a scenario in which Weil later matches the June 2026 market ask: $10,000 on the junior rungs, $20,000 on the senior rungs, still not a published Weil cell, and labeled as a scenario when it goes to the committee.

The finding that does not flatter us is the one that makes the rest usable. Of those 14 company-side lockstep-priced searches, 5 reopened compensation after the first offer because the company had matched base and omitted the special-bonus layer. 4 of those 5 lost the first-choice candidate. The associate was not being difficult. The associate was sitting on a published January cash cell, with an hours floor the tracker recorded as none, and the company had decided the special was discretionary. We still closed those files — they sit inside the 33 — but we closed them on a second candidate, past the typical 6-to-12-week window, after a counter the firm was structurally well placed to make. The finding that does not flatter us is the one that makes the rest usable. Of those 14 company-side lockstep-priced searches, 5 reopened compensation after the first offer because the company had matched base and omitted the special-bonus layer. 4 of those 5 lost the first-choice candidate. The associate was not being difficult. The associate was sitting on a published January cash cell, with an hours floor the tracker recorded as none, and the company had decided the special was discretionary. We still closed those files — they sit inside the 33 — but we closed them on a second candidate, past the typical 6-to-12-week window, after a counter the firm was structurally well placed to make.

A head of legal at a listed private-equity platform described the miss in one clause: they matched the $365,000 fifth-year base and treated the $20,000 special as a signing extra they could skip. The candidate stayed. That is not a culture story. It is arithmetic the tracker already published.

Two composite mandates

A New York general counsel at a mega-cap alternative-asset manager asked us to hire a fifth-year private-equity associate off an Am Law 50 lockstep onto an Associate General Counsel / Principal seat. We closed in 10 weeks, inside the usual 6-to-12-week band. The first offer matched the last-public $365,000 fifth-year base and omitted the $20,000 special. The firm counter-offered. The company matched the special on the second conversation. Signature took 11 working days from the revised offer, which is the median on this line.

A listed digital-media company posting a Vice President, Corporate Development and Assistant General Counsel seat priced a fourth-year M&A associate on base only. The process ran 14 weeks and died on the first-choice candidate, who stayed for the January special. We closed the file on a second name. That mandate is one of the 5 that had to reopen pay, and one of the 4 that lost the first-choice lawyer. The lesson for a chief legal officer is not subtle: if the tracker published the special, it is part of the cell. A listed digital-media company posting a Vice President, Corporate Development and Assistant General Counsel seat priced a fourth-year M&A associate on base only. The process ran 14 weeks and died on the first-choice candidate, who stayed for the January special. We closed the file on a second name. That mandate is one of the 5 that had to reopen pay, and one of the 4 that lost the first-choice lawyer. The lesson for a chief legal officer is not subtle: if the tracker published the special, it is part of the cell.

When the brief is a company-side match against this lockstep, we run it as an in-house search with a published comparator, not as a law-firm lateral. The service pages that correspond are associate recruiting for the earner and in-house counsel recruiting for the payer. Partner-layer moves that sit next to this associate cell belong on partner pay at the Am Law top 50 and on lateral partner recruiting.