How we compute the numbers

BigLaw Bear maps every market a firm has an office in to a single cost-of-living index, normalized so the US national average = 100. New York indexes at 187, San Francisco at 179, Chicago at 117, and so on. The full table lives in src/lib/cost-of-living.ts in our public repo.

Why we use a composite index: housing alone is the most-cited COL metric, but it underweights the day-to-day delta - groceries, transportation, and utilities are also meaningfully different across BigLaw markets. The composite index captures this.

What we don't model:

• Neighborhood-level variance within a market (Manhattan vs Brooklyn vs Queens for "New York").
• Lifestyle delta (how much you eat out, whether you own a car).
• Tax-advantaged housing (employer-provided housing, rent-stabilized leases).

Every tool that returns a "post-tax take-home" estimate uses the same tax model. Federal + FICA is treated as a flat 28% effective rate; state + city marginal tax is looked up per market.

Federal + FICA effective rate

A single filer at $245,000 gross, taking the standard deduction, falls in the 24-32% federal bracket. Adding FICA (6.2% Social Security up to the wage base + 1.45% Medicare + 0.9% Additional Medicare on income over $200k) yields an effective rate around 28%. We use 28% as a flat constant across markets to keep the comparison axis honest - federal+FICA doesn't vary by city.

State + city rates

Per-market rates are the combined state + city marginal rates at the BigLaw single-filer income band. NY state is 6.85% + NYC city is 3.876% = 10.7%; we round to 11.7% to capture the part-year-high-bracket bump on $245k+. CA tops out at 12.3% across all our covered cities. WA, FL, TX, NV, TN show 0% (no state income tax). The full lookup is in STATE_CITY_TAX_RATE in src/lib/cost-of-living.ts.

What we don't model:

• 401(k) and IRA contributions (which lower your effective federal rate).
• Married-filing-jointly or head-of-household scenarios.
• State-specific deductions (NY commuter benefit, CA SDI tax, etc.).
• Quarterly estimated tax timing (relevant if you're 1099, but BigLaw is W-2).

The Salary Calculator shows every BigLaw firm's first-year salary adjusted for cost of living in the city you'd actually work in. The math is straightforward:

adjustedSalary = nominalSalary × (100 / colIndex[city])

Each firm's starting_salary comes from the firm's published 2026 first-year scale. Firms that haven't published a 2026 scale fall back to their 2025 scale; firms with no published scale at all are excluded from the ranked list.

Bonus structure (referenced but not summed)

The salary calculator surfaces published bonus structures (Cravath scale, Davis Polk scale, off-market scales) per firm but does NOT add them to the displayed nominal - that's the Total Comp Comparison tool's job. We keep them separated because bonuses vary year-to-year, and a yearly average can mislead.

The Cost-of-Living Adjuster takes one offer in market A and shows what it's worth in market B. The math is the inverse of the salary calculator:

equivalent = nominal × (toIndex / fromIndex)
takeHome = nominal × (1 - 0.28 - stateCityTax[market])

The "tax burden delta" surfaces the difference in state+city rate between the two markets - the federal piece cancels out. Take-home delta then surfaces what your bank account actually sees per market.

The Total Comp Comparison stacks up to four offers side-by-side. Total cash is the sum of:

• Base salary - the firm's 2026 first-year scale.
• Signing bonus - user input (firms vary widely; many publish a $40k-50k figure).
• Year-end bonus - user input, defaulted to ~8.5% of base (the first-year Cravath/Davis Polk scale).
• Clerkship premium - user input, defaulted to $0; toggle up to $75k for federal clerks (a common bump). Some firms also credit state high-court clerkships.

COL-adjusted total cash uses the same formula as the salary calculator, applied to the summed total. Take-home is the same approximation as elsewhere.

What we don't model: retention bonuses, stock components (very rare in BigLaw), in-firm class-year jumps mid-year, or the tax timing on signing bonuses (which usually clear before December).

The Practice-Area Fit Quiz asks 12 questions on a 5-point Likert scale (Strongly disagree to Strongly agree, mapped to -2..+2). Each answer multiplies a per-practice-area weight (-3..+3); scores are summed across questions and normalized to a -100..+100 scale. The top three positive-score areas surface as "best fits."

The quiz covers 16 BigLaw practice areas: M&A / Corporate, Litigation, Capital Markets, Tax, Real Estate, Restructuring, IP, Employment, White Collar, Antitrust, Banking & Finance, Private Equity, ERISA & ExecComp, Healthcare, Environmental, and Pro Bono / Public Interest. Full per-question weights live in src/lib/practice-area-quiz.ts in our public repo.

How weights were chosen

Weights were seeded from BigLaw practice descriptions (Vault practice-area profiles + Chambers Associate Insider Reports + the firm-side recruiting collateral our partner firms publish), plus post-hoc legal-pedagogy literature on attorney work-style typologies. They're meant as a starting point for self-reflection, not a hiring recommendation.

What this quiz is NOT: predictive of where you'll actually be hired, comprehensive of every sub-specialty, or a substitute for talking to attorneys in the practice areas it surfaces.

BigLaw Bear surfaces three different ranking signals because they measure different things:

• Vault Rank - peer-reputation survey (associates rate firms other than their own). Captures prestige but not work quality. Updated annually.
• Chambers Bands - practice-by-practice rankings based on partner / client / peer interviews. Bands 1-6, with Band 1 being top-tier in that practice in that market. Updated annually.
• AmLaw 100 / 200 - revenue-based rankings (revenue per lawyer, gross revenue, profits per partner). Updated annually.

When you sort the firms directory by "Chambers Band 1" or filter by practice, we use the most recent published Chambers data for the practice + market combination. When the firm has multiple offices ranked differently for the same practice, we surface the highest band.

Pre-screening (firm-side AI scoring of candidate applications) is regulated under the NYC Local Law 144 (AEDT) and Illinois AI Video Interview Act. We publish the bias-audit math, model card, and adverse-impact metrics on a separate page:

AI Methodology + Bias Audit

That page is the legally-binding methodology disclosure required by AEDT. It includes per-protected-class four-fifths-rule math, the prescreen rubric weights, and the human-override audit log.

Every formula on this page is implemented in our public repository at github.com/tjtags/Common-counsel-v2. If you spot an error, file an issue or send a PR. Specific files worth reading:

• src/lib/cost-of-living.ts - COL indices, tax rates, helpers.
• src/lib/practice-area-quiz.ts - quiz questions, per-PA weights, scoring.
• src/lib/aedt-audit-math.ts - four-fifths-rule + adverse impact math for the AEDT page.
• src/lib/nalp.ts - NALP offer-deadline computation (Aug 1 + 28 days, with weekend rolling).

This page reflects the BigLaw Bear platform as of May 2026. Cost-of-living indices are Q4 2025; tax rates are 2026 tax year; salary scales are 2026 first-year; Chambers bands are 2026 cycle. We rebuild the underlying lookup tables once a year (typically January) and once after a Cravath / Milbank scale-shift announcement.

If you're reading this in a future year and the numbers feel stale, check the file timestamps in the public repo or open an issue - we ship updates as data lands, but the docs sometimes lag a release or two.