More Departures at O'Melveny & Myers: Paying Partners To Go Away

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The latest departures from OMM (1) involve partners and (2) appear to be voluntary. From the Legal Pad:

Legal Pad is still chasing information about O’Melveny & Myers’ early retirement program…. Details are dribbling out, but the firm is officially pretty tight-lipped so far.

“It’s strictly voluntary,” the firm said in a statement today. “We’ve implemented this type of program in the past and this is nothing new for our firm or law firms in general.”

The temporary option was offered for a window of time — how long isn’t clear to us yet, but we hear the window’s closed now — to all partners over age 50 who met certain requirements, such as length of tenure at the firm, according to a source close to O’Melveny management.

And maybe profitability? From an earlier post at Legal Pad:

[One departing partner] didn’t want to go into too much detail about the retirement buyout, but he did say it’s temporary and available to partners age 50 and up. We’re wondering whether there are any other conditions on the offer, how many people are taking it, when it went into effect, and whether yet another year of flat partner profits motivated it.

One knowledgeable but anonymous observer familiar with how L.A. law firms’ finances work speculated that the firm probably took a look its profitability curve and “maybe found out that the older guys aren’t sprinting, but trotting.”

This O’Melveny makeover reminds us of Cadwalader’s Project Rightsize. Hopefully it will have a happier ending.
More On O’Melveny’s Early Retirement Offers [Legal Pad / Cal Law]
O’Melveny Paying Older Partners to Leave [Legal Pad / Cal Law]

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