Dewey & LeBoeuf paid special bonuses totalling $1.1m each to CFO Joel Sanders and executive director Steve DiCarmine in the months running up to the firm’s collapse, bankruptcy filings reveal.

The duo were each paid sums of $500,000 in January and $600,000 in February, according to the defunct firm’s financial statement, which was filed last Thursday (26 July), with the figures coming on top of their twice-monthly bonuses of $25,000.

The first bonus payment, dated 13 January, came two weeks before the firm’s climax conference call for global partners on 27 January, during which chairman Steve Davis told partners they needed to “own” the firm’s financial crisis (28 March 2012).

The second and larger bonus, meanwhile, is dated 29 February and occurred less than a week before the firm announced it would cut 5 per cent of lawyers globally (5 March 2012).