Milbank fired the starting gun on the 2026 salary wars more than a week ago, and the compensation scorecard has been filling up fast ever since.
Recruiters predicted a rapid wave of matches would follow Milbank’s announcement, and broadly speaking, they were correct in that assessment.
However, there is one notable catch to the flurry of activity: the firms doing the matching are almost entirely elite litigation boutiques rather than traditional Biglaw players.
The list of firms that have moved on salary since Milbank’s announcement reads like a directory of top commercial litigation shops across the United States.
Hueston Hennigan, Vartabedian Katz Hester Haynes, Quinn Emanuel, Groom Law Group, AZA, Elsberg Baker and Maruri, and Wilkinson Stekloff have all moved to match the new compensation benchmark.
Susman Godfrey went a step further, not merely matching Milbank but surpassing it, triggering a boutique compensation arms race of its own.
Holwell Shuster and Goldberg followed Susman Godfrey’s lead, while Kellogg Hansen has also been above market for some time without others moving to match it.
Of the traditional Biglaw firms, only McDermott made a move, and notably it did so on the very same day Milbank made its announcement.
The 2023 cycle offers an instructive comparison: when Milbank announced raises in November of that year, Cravath moved on November 28, just three weeks later, and once Cravath acted, the floodgates opened across the market.
The compensation cascade historically works in a defined sequence, with Milbank starting the process, Cravath ratifying or exceeding it, and the rest of the market falling into line shortly thereafter.
That ratification moment has not yet arrived in 2026, and the prevailing theory is that traditional Biglaw firms are deliberately waiting rather than rushing to act.
The hesitation does not appear to stem from financial pressure, given that Biglaw had a very strong 2025 and Am Law 100 numbers reflect that performance clearly.
Nor does it appear that these firms are philosophically opposed to paying associates more generously, leaving the precise timing of their moves as the central open question in the market right now.