The Salary Scale That Beats Big Law

If you have read our analysis of the 2026 Big Law salary scale, you know the market now runs from $235,000 for first-years to $455,000 at eighth year, after Milbank moved it on 2 June. That grid is where nearly every lateral conversation in the US starts, and for most associates it is also where the conversation ends. For litigators with the right profile, there is a second number to look at.

Six litigation boutiques are paying above that scale as of early October 2026. The premium runs from $5,000 at the bottom of Susman Godfrey's grid to $65,000 at the top of Kellogg Hansen's. There, seventh-years and of counsel are on $505,000 against a market base of $440,000, before anyone gets to bonuses.

Litigation boutique salary scales above the Big Law scale, 2026

Firm	Announced	Top of scale	First-year base	Gap to market
Market scale (Milbank)	June 2, 2026	$455,000 (eighth year)	$235,000	$0
Susman Godfrey	June 10, 2026	$450,000 (seventh year)	$240,000	$5,000
Holwell Shuster & Goldberg	June 11, 2026	$450,000 (seventh year)	$240,000	$5,000
Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider	September 2025	$460,000 (eighth year)	$250,000	$15,000
Desmarais	June 10, 2026	$455,000 (eighth year)	$255,000	$20,000
Groombridge Wu Baughman & Stone	June 25, 2026	$470,000 (eighth year)	$255,000	$20,000
Kellogg Hansen	June 10, 2026	$505,000 (seventh year)	$275,000	$40,000

Source: firm announcements and Above the Law, Associate Compensation Scorecard, 2026. Figures correct as of October 7, 2026.

Notes: Base salary only, excluding year-end and special bonuses. All scales effective July 1, 2026, except Axinn, which has paid on this scale since September 2025. Kellogg Hansen's first-year figure applies to associates joining after a clerkship. Associates joining directly from law school start at $240,000.

It would be easy to read that table and conclude that boutiques now out-pay Big Law, which is not the case as a category. A longer list of litigation boutiques has matched the Milbank scale without going above it, among them Quinn Emanuel, Hueston Hennigan, Wilkinson Stekloff and Elsberg Baker & Maruri. The firms above the scale are competing hard for one kind of lawyer. Usually that lawyer clerked federally, has examined a witness at trial or has depth in antitrust, patents or appellate work that a few clients will pay a great deal for. Whether the second number matters depends on whether you are that lawyer.

When an associate sends us one of these headlines, the first thing we check is which class year the firm's figure applies to. The gap varies by firm and by class year, and the premium a candidate has in mind is sometimes not the one on offer at their seniority.

 

What is a litigation boutique?

A litigation boutique is a law firm that does disputes and little else. The firms in this market handle complex commercial cases, trials and appeals, and most carry a specialism on top, antitrust or patents or investigations or white-collar defence.

Size on its own tells you very little. The six firms named above are small by headcount and sit at the top of the market for trial lawyers. A thirty-lawyer disputes firm in a regional city is also a boutique, and it has nothing to do with this pay market.

When a lawyer asks us about a particular boutique, we want to know what the firm has tried in the past two years and what the associates on those matters were allowed to do. You may not find either on the website, so ask.

 

Why can a smaller firm pay more?

The simplest explanation is that these firms are buying something different. A global firm may hire associates by the hundred across every practice and office, and one scale has to work for all of them. A boutique that takes on a dozen can decide what each seat is worth and pay accordingly. That matters most where it expects the person in the seat to be defending depositions and arguing motions years before a peer at a large firm would.

The competition for those lawyers is different as well. A boutique recruiting a former clerk is up against plaintiff-side trial firms, the litigation groups at the global firms, government and in-house. Base salary is one of the few levers that works against all four at once, which goes a long way to explaining why the published scales have moved.

The economics help, up to a point. A boutique runs a concentrated book of large matters, so revenue per lawyer can be very high, and there are no transactional or regulatory practices to carry in a slow year. The same concentration cuts the other way. Two settlements in one quarter can change a firm's hiring appetite, and a published salary scale is only as durable as the pipeline behind it.

Above the Law described these firms as a second compensation benchmark in June. On what has been published so far that seems fair, though a benchmark set by six firms only applies to the lawyers those six firms want.

We put more weight on what a boutique's docket looks like today than on what it announced in June. If the partners cannot describe the next year or two of work in some detail, treat the scale as a snapshot.

 

The cash comparison is bigger than base salary

Base salary makes the headlines, but it tells you the least about what the offer is actually worth.

Start with class year. Firms do not always credit a lateral at the year they expect, and a lawyer credited one year below where they thought they would land has lost a good part of the premium before signing anything. Get the class credit in writing before you compare anything else.

Bonuses are where the comparison most often falls apart. The market scale comes with a published year-end grid and, this year, a Milbank-led special bonus of $6,000 to $25,000. Boutique bonuses vary much more than base pay does, and a firm will not always volunteer how its awards were decided. Ask how last year's were set and how many associates got the top figure.

Then the clerkship money. For a lawyer coming off a federal clerkship, the signing bonus can be the biggest single swing in first-year cash. Desmarais has said publicly that it pays market-leading signing bonuses to associates who join straight from federal clerkships. We think this is the number candidates most often underweight, because it is paid once and then disappears from the comparison.

Workload belongs in the same calculation. Nobody pays $65,000 over market for a lighter year. The team will be smaller and more of the case will sit with you, and in the weeks around a trial expect the schedule to stop existing. Some people want exactly that. Be honest with yourself about whether you are one of them.

The last line is the hardest to price, meaning what the partnership track looks like in that group and whether the practice you build there could move with you if it ever had to. None of it appears in the offer letter, which is why most of our time on an offer comparison goes on those questions and very little on base.

 

What lawyers may gain at an elite litigation boutique

The case for a boutique is the work, and specifically how early you get it. On a small trial team a fourth-year may be preparing a witness and sometimes examining one, where the same associate on a much larger team is more likely to be managing the document review.
That exposure is the reason people make the move, and it is also why these firms are so careful about who they hire. They rely on associates to do work that elsewhere would sit with a senior associate or a junior partner.

The other advantage is harder to measure. Working closely with a small number of partners, and being known inside the firm as a trial lawyer, tends to make the next move cleaner, whether into partnership or into an in-house disputes role. The lawyers we would steer toward a boutique are the ones who already know they want to be in court for the rest of their careers.

None of this is automatic. Two associates at the same firm can have very different years depending on which partners pick them up and what happens to be live when they arrive. Ask who you would be working for, by name, and what is live in their practice.

 

What lawyers can give up

The large firm still offers things a boutique cannot. International offices, a formal training program, a bench of tax or employment or regulatory specialists when a dispute needs one, and the option to move groups if you discover you prefer deals to disputes. That flexibility is easy to overlook when you are comparing salary. A boutique is an expensive place to find out you did not want to be a litigator after all.

There is also less cover when a practice slows. A global firm can carry a quiet litigation group for a year on the back of its deal work, whereas a boutique has fewer practice areas to absorb a slowdown.

So the pay is higher for a reason. These firms want a level of commitment that a lockstep salary at a full-service firm does not ask for, and they are prepared to pay for it. Compare what the extra money is paying for, as well as the figure itself.

If you are still undecided about litigation, stay on a broader platform for a little longer. Once you know whether you want to build your career in court, you will be in a much better position to judge whether a boutique is the right move.

 

What to ask before accepting a boutique offer

These are the questions we would put to any boutique before a candidate signs, and a firm that is paying above market and hiring carefully should be able to give direct answers.

• How will the firm credit my class year and set my base salary?
• How were year-end, special and discretionary bonuses decided over the past two years?
• What does the matter pipeline look like in my practice area for the next year?
• How many associates are staffed on a typical case?
• What work do midlevel associates own?
• How much trial, deposition, hearing or client exposure can I expect in my first two years?
• What have lawyers at my level gone on to do?
• What does partnership progression look like in this particular practice?

A lower-paying role with a deep pipeline and partners who delegate can be the better decision, and an above-market offer can be entirely justified by the work behind it. The headline figure will not tell you which of those you are looking at, and the answers to these eight questions usually do.

 

There is no single legal pay market in 2026

What the June announcements confirmed is that US associate pay now has more than one benchmark. The Cravath scale still anchors the full-service market. Alongside it sits a smaller market for litigators with trial, appellate, antitrust, patent, investigations or white-collar experience, and the two are priced differently.

A scale comparison therefore tells a litigator less than it used to. The questions that matter are what you will be doing and what that experience will be worth when you next move, and the number on the grid comes after that.

A boutique is only one alternative to Big Law. If you are questioning whether the wider trade-off is still worth it, read Is Big Law Still Worth It in 2026? If you are comparing a boutique with a smaller full-service platform, Big Law vs mid-sized law firms in 2026 is the more useful comparison. If you could see yourself leaving private practice altogether, In-house vs private practice in 2026 covers that decision.

If you are weighing a litigation move, our private practice team can help you assess where a specific offer sits.

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