Nationwide Personnel Reconfiguration Watch: McKee Nelson
We previously commended the firm of McKee Nelson for the steps it's taking to accommodate its associates in the wake of the credit crunch. Credit market woes have significantly affected the firm's once booming capital markets practice, but the firm is bending over backwards not to do layoffs.
So far backwards, in fact, that we're going to go even farther: we wish we worked at MN. To paraphrase Crazy Eddie, the offers they're making to associates are INSANE.
On Friday, the firm offered these options to its associates:
(1) a full bonus, and four months' pay, to anyone willing to depart from the firm; or(2) the option to take a year-long sabbatical, at 40 percent pay, AND with a full bonus for 2007.
Wow. How is option (2) -- or even option (1), for people who wanted to change jobs or career paths anyway -- not the sweetest deal ever? You get a year off from the Biglaw grind, at 40 percent of your pay (McKee is on the $160K scale), AND with a year-end bonus? (Their bonus table appears here -- the firm is paying standard year-end bonuses, although not "special" bonuses.)
There are some caveats, according to our tipsters. First, there's no guarantee of a job at the end of the sabbatical -- whether you can return to the firm will depend on what the business climate looks like in a year. Second, you're supposed to do something public-interest-oriented during that year -- or, as the managing partner put it, "something that makes the world better." So you can't just go to Ibiza and party for twelve months (although cynics claim that turning lawyers into layabouts "makes the world better").
On the other hand, there's no requirement that you work for a 501(c)(3) during your sabbatical; the concept has some flexibility. Could you perhaps use the year -- and the money -- to study painting, or to finish the novel you started writing back in law school?
So many lawyers talk about the dreams that died when they went to law school. How is the McKee Nelson sabbatical program not a great opportunity to resurrect those dreams, with the luxury of free time and financial security?
Earlier: Nationwide Personnel Reconfiguration Watch: McKee Nelson
(74) Comments
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third
NY to 1 year vacation and full bonus!
creative, generous and classy move. they could have just lowballed discretionary bonuses and forced people out.
LOL @ 5:07
If my firm offered this, I'd take it in a heartbeat.
Pay me not to work!
That is so great. I think all firms should give associates sabaticals for a few months if they are valuable to the firm.
What happens to your health insurance and other benefits? That would be my major concern.
(But for people who are married and can count on their spouse's insurance, this is a GREAT deal.)
Presumably, if still paid at 40%, you are an employee with benefits.
Why would anyone take option 1? 40% pay of a year's pay is more than 4 months of full pay. I guess if you get another job you forfeit the remainder of your 40%?
I would finally have time to do what I truly love: working with retards.
Wow, I'd totally take the sabbatical year, and sit on a beach somewhere where 125K (2008 salary + 2007 bonus) goes a little further than it does in NY.
I guess some firms do care about their associates!
Why would anyone take option 1? 40% pay of a year's pay is more than 4 months of full pay. I guess if you get another job you forfeit the remainder of your 40%?
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It is, but not by much, and there are no strings attached. And it could be a real windfall if you found another job right away.
5:18 - that was laugh out loud funny. good one.
Gallion OUT!
p.s. option 2 is possibly best deal ever. I would have said "where do I sign" faster than I crap out my five guys lunches.
$64,000.....
full bonus ($30-55k).....
full benefits....
12 month vacation.....
and (hopefully) a job when you return paying $160k.
Best...Deal...Ever
money for nothing, and the checks for free
McKee Nelson: Where Business is Leaving
Wow. I'd take either option in a heartbeat. Newsweek should do an article on them for this alone.
I would love to get a buyout like this.
Unfortunately, my firm is too successful to find itself in this position.
Gimme the full bonus and 4 months' pay and I'm out the door ...
Either one would be awesome. I'm gonna send them my resume pronto.
I wish my firm matched this.
5:18,
I already work with retards at my law firm.
why do they not have a california office?!
It'll be interesting to see how many associates take this. They should have ended the announcement with "this offer open only to the first 25 (or whatever) to respond."
Lat: the real question to ask is what would you BIGLAW associates do with a one-year sabbatical at 40% pay, if you could do anything substantive, aside from just partying around the world?
I would probably go to a third world country and do something legal-related.
Wonder if this applies only to cap markets associates or any dept. can accept?
I'd take option (2) and use the year to catch up on the social life I haven't had since joining BigLaw.
I'm sick and tired of cheap-a$$ BigLaw that hasn't matched the bonuses and is now threatening to abandon market bonuses altogether and go to an hourly based bonus system instead, so as to be on par with its other offices.
id take option 2 and ask to remain on that deal forever.
holy hell, that sounds amazing.
is it too late to interview with them for next summer?
I would go to a third world country and save the poor with my awesome legal superpowers.
LOL, f-the poor, I'd be knee deep in booze and broads, travelling to costa rica, thailand, amsterdam, ibiza, cannes...
I think there is a reason the job is not guaranteed on return. I don't think anyone at McKee is guaranteed to have a job in a year, except maybe Mr. Nelson. Also, this is smart. Say what you will about securitization being monkey work, it takes a while to train a monkey to do that. Paying 40% to keep the monkeys in the primate house for a year while you decide if you need them isn't necessarily a money loser. Problem of course is that the monkey might take the 40% and not choose to come back. Monkeys are fickle like that. Anyway, I say that this is a classy bunch of apes and not the heartless chimps you gorillas have made them out to be.
SIDLEY: At the very least, please match McKee!
Gray Cary and Brobeck offered people to take a year off for $30k during the dot-bomb days, I think.
Thirty-seventh!!!! Yes!!!!
I hear CWT is going to offer similar deals.
LOL.
Bank of America offered a sabbatical package to their 1st year (incoming) analysts in August. As everyone knows, a couple months later they laid off a bunch of people. Sabbatical packages sound sweet but, as a general matter, they forebode layoffs.
sidley DOES have a sabbatical program. One of the partners who interviewed me took it. It is basically a three month vacation.
Everyone knows Ibiza isn't a year-round destination. From Oct. - May, there's a lot of rain, the temp dips to the 40s and 50s and pretty much only Pacha is open on the club front.
Now if this were occurring in late-May or so, I'd take it in a heartbeat, but I'd have to think twice about attempting to do the ol' Ibiza standard party sequence of starting Saturday afternoon at Bora Bora and going straight through to Monday afternoon at DC10. For anyone curious, that involves Bora Bora (Saturday afternoon); Amensia (Saturday night); Space (all day Sunday and Sunday night); and eventually DC10 (Monday morning and afternoon). For anyone who's pulled such an all-nighter at work, you feel me.
I am a first year associate in a financial services group. Does anyone with a little more experience think I should be concerned?
Classy move by McKee Nelson. More than can be said for Clifford Chance, Kirkland, etc.
^^Yah, you'll be losing your job soon, so don't be buying anything expensive.
7:46 - its defcon 5
seriously unless you work in the cap markets group at CWT, you're probably fine.
Question on option 2 - do you have to sign something saying you won't work somewhere else for that year?
wow. very classy move. don't think other structured finance firms will do the same. and not a bad deal for the MN associates because they won't have as much of a stigma as associates who work for firms which would just let them go without bonus and say "good luck"
8:21 - under option 2 you must agree to work for some sort of non-profit and "make this world a better place"
who does number 2 work for?
if you have already signed with a firm, who then were unable to take you on - would you get a sweet deal to walk away or just be left out in the increasing cold?
Now I totally understand what "Doing it Well or Not at All" means
this firm deserves a lot of respect. it is so clear that they value their associates. a trust class act.
that's a "true" class act.
This really puts Clifford Chance to shame - giving six associates the boot right before bonus time. Shame on you CC!!
This is very similar to what Accenture did for hundreds of new-hire analysts back in the tech downturn of 2001-2002.
If I was a McKee Nelson Associate, I'd take number two. Go down to New Orleans. "Rebuild the community by restoring homes" (i.e., flip houses for a profit) and spend my evenings getting drunk on Bourbon Street and sleeping with Tulane coeds. Though that's really just a first thought on this matter, I'm sure I could come up with something better.
CC rocks!!! They are going to help the six senior associates find another job. MN is just giving this deal to look good, they'll be forced to lay people off when some don't take it
This is stupid. Where is LEWW? Who cares about firms that no one from any decent undergrad or law school has ever heard of, let alone considered going to work? Can we get back to what this site was supposed to be about?
So, if somebody did go ahead and get a low-paying, but interesting/fulfilling, legal job, he or she could get the pittance pay + 40% from McKee? I'd do that to get the experience/have something additional on my resume and then go back to McKee after my year (or start looking if I caught wind my job wasn't waiting for me).
I actually couldn't live only on the 40% (child/spouse/mortgage), but I'd probably take that if I could get a job I liked that paid less than I could normally take.
D.C. OFFICES OF CHICAGO FIRMS:
Match NY bonuses/special bonuses
Classy? Looks like a dumb or desperate move. McKee doesn't have the guts to distinguish between its good and lousy associates, to make the hard choices that real businesspersons make every day about which of their people they need to keep, and which need to be shown the door. What happens if some of their best take Option 1? I guess it doesn't matter. Sounds to me like a firm in dire straits.
"Could you perhaps use the year -- and the money -- to study painting, or to finish the novel you started writing back in law school?"
Or perhaps you could start a stupid blog or write an awful book about the year you clerked.
for those who were wondering, this deal has not been offered to non-cap markets MN associates.
"for those who were wondering, this deal has not been offered to non-cap markets MN associates."
No one was wondering.
to 8:58am
I would say that it sounds to me that you are an idiot. This move will build more positive publicity for them, than raising salaries or bonuses ever would. This shows them to be a firm that genuinely cares about their associates. This is how you retain talent, instead of having the regular biglaw attrition rate. If you treat your associates well, and make them feel secure, they won't leave after 3 years.
ditto on 11:04
8:58 - Partners at MN know who the good associates are, and the good MN associates know who they are.
I would rather take a sabbatical (knowing that even if the market hasn't entirely rebounded yet in the future that there will always be room for good associates) or stay at MN for the long-run where the partners reward their best associates generously and treat them kindly and this remains the Vault #1 best firm to work for than to take option 1 for short-term financial benefit.
If you take option 1, you are obviously too dumb to be one of the best.
If these options were offered at my firm, I think the partners would have a completely empty office next week, and I for one would be wasted on some beach in the tropics.
P.S. to my 11:50 comment, I work for CWT and HATE IT!
I going to lateral to MN just to take #2!
Seriously, what a class act.
Take the sabbatical and start your own firm. Most lawyers starting a firm would kill for this kind of opportunity - http://www.myshingle.com/my_shingle/2007/11/hey-mckee-nelso.html
BTW, don't think that you will need to abandon your biglaw practice by going solo - I'm an energy regulatory and appellate attorney and I compete against, or work with large firms all the time. And my book on starting a firm is coming out in January (Solo by Choice: How to Be the Lawyer You Always Wanted to Be) includes sections specifically geared towards well credentialed, biglaw attorneys who want to start firms.
11:14 - You are obviously too dumb to realize that option 1 may be the best plan for some people, regardless of their value to MN. Its sad that its come to this, but with the lack of partnership chances for capital markets associates, good people may be leaving for greener pastures. Its a calculated career choice.
All in all, the partnership's willingness to provide associates with these options speaks highly of how they value their employees. Until someone can name another firm that would respond this way, MN is the only high profile shop that has demonstrated that they do indeed care about the people that come through their front door everyday. The openness, honesty and responsiveness with which this was handled should be a lesson to all employers facing tough economic decisions.
MN partners have handled the credit crunch with poise and total class (at least from an outsider's perspective). Kudos to them and I only wish more firms had the decency to offer such alternatives. My firm fires people now so that they don't have to pay bonuses due in January.
what if they go out of business in the next year?
they just announced that support staff were getting bonuses and raises
6:16: mckee is not going out of business in the next year. they just got done actively hiring for their new associate class and they are filling positions outside of securities. if anything, this whole situation will strengthen the firm because it will make them expand their other practice areas. they're even recruiting new partners to come to the firm to help expand non-securities practices... mckee is a growing firm with a lot of potential.