Bankruptcy, Job Searches, Layoffs

It's Raining Men. And Women. From Cadwalader.(Plus: CWT is hiring?)

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This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, but résumés from refugees of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft are all over the street right now. One recruiter, at an outside headhunting firm, described receiving “a flood” of CWT résumés in the past week. An in-house recruiting coordinator at an Am Law 100 firm agreed, noting that, interestingly enough, a number of the CWT submissions appear to be from lawyers in departments largely untouched by the layoffs. People at Cadwalader seem to be heading for the exits, in droves — even lawyers in “safe” practice areas.
We can hardly blame them. When it comes to career planning these days, being proactive and playing defensively is smart. If you think there’s even a chance you might be laid off from your law firm (or that your law firm might dissolve), start exploring your options early. As the conventional wisdom goes, it’s generally easier to find a job when you have a job.
To be sure, five months of severance, which is what Cadwalader is giving the 96 lawyers it axed last week, is generous (but justified — lawyers who survived the January layoffs were told they’d have jobs at least through the end of the year). But five months goes by more quickly than you’d think — and the job market, as everyone knows, is crappy not great. As reported by Am Law Daily, ten of the victims of the January layoffs at Cadwalader have yet to find new jobs, some seven months later.
Perhaps surprisingly, however, Cadwalader continues to bring on new people, even as it sends almost 100 attorneys into the unemployment wilderness. We got our hands on an email that was sent around firm-wide today, without even taking the dismissed attorneys off of the distribution, announcing the arrival of a new bankruptcy associate.
Check it out, after the jump.


CADWALADER, WICKERSHAM & TAFT — MEMORANDUM — NEW HIRE
From: [xxxx]
To: [Firm-wide distribution]
Sent: Mon Aug 04
Subject: Welcome [xxxx]
We are pleased to welcome [xxxx] who has joined us as an Associate in the Financial Restructuring Department in our New York Office.
[xxxx] comes to us from [a Vault 10 law firm], where she had been practicing since 2006. [xxxx] is located in Room [xxxx] and can be reached at Extension [xxxx].
Residents of the 37th floor and our [xxxx] alumni, please take a few minutes to stop by and welcome [her] to the Firm.
[xxxx]
Associate Development Assistant
Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP
One World Financial Center
New York, NY 10281

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