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Where can 1Ls get five-figure signing bonuses?
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Where can 1Ls get five-figure signing bonuses?
March 26, 2026, 10:47 am CDT
In a move that some say is costing large law firms more money in recruitment programs, at least 15 Am Law 100 firms are offering first-year associates as much as $50,000 if they commit to 2L summer associate programs. (Image from Shutterstock)
In a move that some say is costing large law firms more money in recruitment programs, at least 15 Am Law 100 firms are offering first-year associates as much as $50,000 if they commit to 2L summer associate programs.
Those firms include Simpson Thacher & Bartlett—which offered a $50,000 1L stipend for public interest law to those committed to its 2027 summer associate program—and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan—which pays law students $25,000 the summer after their first year to do a public interest job and another $25,000 payment after they complete the firm’s 2L summer program.
If someone receives the payment but does not show up for the 2L summer associate program, there are no clawbacks, a Quinn Emanuel representative told Law.com.
Melissa Hart, the chair-elect of the council of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, told Law.com that she has ethical concerns, citing Model Rule 5.3 and Model Rule 5.6 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Both address supervising lawyers and nonlawyers.
A former Colorado Supreme Court justice and a legal ethics professor, she described it to Law.com as a “regulatory question.”
“There’s at least an argument that for a law firm to say, ‘We will pay you money not to work at some swath of jobs,’ it is a restriction on practice that is not ethically permissible,” Hart told Law.com.
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