Scoop: Some will have still picked up 100%, but overall the take home bonus pay may have reduced slightly
Trilegal has internally announced associate promotions this week and paid out bonuses - possibly slightly reduced from normal levels - while the legal industry continues to reel under and figure out the full potential fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Trilegal has promoted the following 16 fee-earners to counsel, which is a rung in Trilegal’s career ladder before partner (and arguably similar to salaried partner at other firms):
- Mohit Rohatgi
- Riyaz Bhagat
- Varuna Bhanrale
- Shravani Shekhar
- Rohan Ghosh
- Sara Rashid Khan
- Dhruv Chatterjee
- Shraddha Krishnan Dash
- Albin George Thomas
- Aakriti Shakdher
- Karishma Dodeja
- Deep Choudhuri
- Komal Dani
- Ankita Chaudhary
- Siddharth Dang
- Kabeer Mathur
In addition, it has also announced its other internal associate promotions.
Bonuses
The traditional bonus payments were also paid towards the end of this last week, pretty much bang on usual schedule. It’s worth noting that Trilegal’s bonuses, as at many other firms, are technically discretionary (though many fee-earners have come to expect them as part of the basic pay package, and many law firms advertise it as such in campus interviews).
While bonus payments at most firms are not very easy to parse or compare, even for fee-earners themselves year-on-year, some tweaking in the formulae may have taken place in Trilegal with a a review of its “incentive scales” (a review it also carries out periodically, to be fair, even in non-Covid times).
Each level of Trilegal’s fee-earner appraisal scale (normally from 1 to 4) corresponds to a set bonus amount. Those amounts are now lower than before, though, according to several sources, top performers can still take home 100% of their bonus entitlement despite the tweaks (though they may have carried off more than 100% before).
On the other hand, lower performers may have come off a little worse this year than in previous years.
Comparison
Out of the big firms we have reported on so far, Trilegal’s response to Covid is currently more business-as-usual than most so far.
Unlike Khaitan & Co and Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) that have respectively reduced and completely slashed all senior partner pay, for instance, we understand that no cuts have been made to partner pay at Trilegal; or at least, not yet and not directly.
In part that could also boil down to Trilegal being one of the few all-equity partnerships in India, amongst large firms, so if the profits go down, as seems inevitable at this point at pretty much every firm, partners would also automatically take a hit on what they get to take home.
Its bonus tweaks also appear just shy of the measures taken by Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, which effectively deferred bonuses and CAM, which also part-transferred fixed pay into the variable component.
We have reached out to Trilegal regarding the above but management declined to comment at the time of publication.
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Comments
Also, are most firms extending joining dates for fresher's?
Since Trilegal’s fixed pay is lower than that of nearly all other tier one law firms and the general practice of paying out the bulk of an associate’s entitlement is what brings it at par with them, this has meant that the average Trilegal associate rakes in significantly lesser than her/ his peers for the previous FY.
Trilegal has shafted its associates much worse than most other law firms because while other law firms are only letting COVID impact the coming FY, Trilegal has screwed them for the previous FY as well. This year is anyway going to be a write off like it will be for the others. They’ve just done it more slyly to maintain the flawed perception that they’re super employee friendly because you can’t cry foul for cutting a discretionary bonus in the same way you can about a deferral / cut in fixed pay.
Other firms paid last year bonuses in full (reports from CAM and SAM at least on LI suggested that)
Trilegal has lower bonuses for last year than others
So that's less BAU than other firms
Sure they've announced promotions, unlike the others - that's a positive difference. Have they also announced increments?
But on bonus, their response is less BAU than other firms, right?
Making full payments without deferrals and revisiting the payout parameters To reduce some payouts by 10 odd percent is quite a bold step. Most lala firms have gone for deferring payments.
That said, I am sure everyone else is a star too. Congrats to all!
It's quite shameful that whereas other firms have come out in the open and given at least an honest explanation of the approach they are taking, Trilegal has chosen to play smoke-and-mirrors. Everyone is going through difficult times but bhai, at least have the courage to inform your associates instead of letting them find out when the reduced sums are deposited in their accounts - on a long weekend at that, so that everyone responsible for this can keep OOOs saying offices are closed and we will get back to you on Monday.
Most of all it's depressing that instead of at least keeping it as firm-wide cost-cutting, they will still allow partners to reward some "high performers" with the full amount of the bonus, when till a few days back (and indeed even now as per the policy that is still shamelessly sitting in the firm's internal portal) everyone who had met expectations set out per the detailed bonus policy of the firm [i]merited[/i] the full amount. Ye bik gai hai gormint.
Btw Kian it's not "possibly" reduced from normal levels. Like most working environments, Trilegal is also not stacked with vaunted "high performers". Whereas many if not most used to get the full 100% bonus in previous years, the simple recalibration of the incentive scale means that no one except a small percentage of fee earners is going to end up getting the full bonus. It's a joke for Trilegal to do this kind of PR after taking such a drastic step.
Worst is the partnership not taking a paycut. Embarrassing.