My secretary enters expenses for me about 15 times a year. That’s it. And 80% of the time I have to follow up to make sure she did it, and usually she has not. Sorry, but I just have no desire to give her more than $100 for completely shoddy, unreliable work.

Youngish partner here.

I’ve given $100 (as a 1st year associate) up to $1000 (as a partner, to a very good secretary). That’s pretty much average in my experience.

However, a common topic among partners at almost every firm these days is that “post-Covid” secretaries, legal assistants and even new associates are universally AWFUL. Lazy, sloppy, entitled… and that’s when they bother to show up.

My current secretary is getting paid something like $80k to show up once a week and work maybe 4 hours per week. She does nothing. I’m not giving her cash on top of that.

My Christmas gift to her is being sufficiently indifferent about it to let her keep her job.

Frankly $0 should be the norm. They have a job and they get paid for it.

The rule is at least 100 bucks per year of seniority and has been for over a decade. I’d assume if you’re at a firm that’s kept up with the top raises and bonuses it would make sense to give at least that since pay has gone up over the last decade. So his 1000 is kind of the lower end.

I work at a boutique law firm, and we give our assistants $3,000 each. The funds are included in the overhead amount per attorney.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I was in big law, associates contributed $1000 each to gift to legal assistant, and I suspect the partners gave more. This was 6 years ago in DC. Now I’m in government and give $100 to my legal assistant.

I just transferred to gov. I thought ethics rules said we can't give gifts more than like 20 bucks?

I am pretty sure all of the ethics rules only address situations where a subordinate is giving a gift to a superior. I don't think there are any limits on a superior giving gifts to subordinates.

Anonymous wrote:I received a Whitman’s Sampler from my lawyer boss years back. The guy’s take home was $3 mil a year after all was said and done.

I hope he ends up in the 9th circle of hell where he belongs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I was in big law, associates contributed $1000 each to gift to legal assistant, and I suspect the partners gave more. This was 6 years ago in DC. Now I’m in government and give $100 to my legal assistant.

I just transferred to gov. I thought ethics rules said we can't give gifts more than like 20 bucks?

Oh I'm this poster, I did the 100 dollars x years in practice starting in 2013

Anonymous wrote:When I was in big law, associates contributed $1000 each to gift to legal assistant, and I suspect the partners gave more. This was 6 years ago in DC. Now I’m in government and give $100 to my legal assistant.

I just transferred to gov. I thought ethics rules said we can't give gifts more than like 20 bucks?

I received a Whitman’s Sampler from my lawyer boss years back. The guy’s take home was $3 mil a year after all was said and done.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are his legal assistant and secretary shared with 2+ more people? If not, I'd agree with the others that the amount is actually low.

Op - yes I believe his secretary and legal assistant support 8-10 people. So it’s not a one on one sort of support.

I am not sure what they do for him. He does his own time that I do know.

Anyway I will take away from this thread that is an appropriate amount for a shared secretary and legal assistant.

"Shared" is a tricky concept. I posted above that I gave $500 to my secretary as a first-year associate in 2005. I probably occupied about 2% of her time, if that. She was "shared" by many attorneys, but I think one partner took at least 75% of her time and was very demanding. Giving $500 did seem strange to me (again, this was 2005, and my total comp was $135K), but I was afraid of looking cheap. In an ideal world, we would have given gifts in proportion to the amount of her time that we occupied, but sadly I don't think that's really the way it works.

Anonymous wrote:I hate this gift-giving culture. It generates such self-doubt, shame, guilt, envy and resentment.

Gift-expecting and economic inequality does that.

Anonymous wrote:Are his legal assistant and secretary shared with 2+ more people? If not, I'd agree with the others that the amount is actually low.

Op - yes I believe his secretary and legal assistant support 8-10 people. So it’s not a one on one sort of support.

I am not sure what they do for him. He does his own time that I do know.

Anyway I will take away from this thread that is an appropriate amount for a shared secretary and legal assistant.

Anonymous wrote:To your secretary and legal assistant? How much is your bonus?

My DH always has been very very generous to his secretary and legal assistant but since he became partner feels like he has to do even more. He gives $1000 to his secretary AND legal assistant. That seems over to top to me but he said a lot of partners are very generous at the holidays.

FWIW his bonus is usually $100-125k a year

But based on his bonus this does not seem generous at all. The amount your DH gives to those that support him every single workday is extremely low and if I were his wife, I'd be embarrassed.

Anonymous wrote:When I was in big law, associates contributed $1000 each to gift to legal assistant, and I suspect the partners gave more. This was 6 years ago in DC. Now I’m in government and give $100 to my legal assistant.

I think I gave my assistant $100 as an associate. She didn't do anything for us other than entering time which was fine, I didn't need admin support. We had a separate word processing group which was incredibly valuable.