No Cadwalader Lawyers Need Apply?(Actually, CWT lawyers are welcome at D&S. See the update.)

DUVAL & STACHENFELD LLP — OPEN LETTER TO ABOVE THE LAW

Dear Above the Law:

My name is Bruce Stachenfeld. I am the managing partner of Duval & Stachenfeld LLP and I would like to respond to the recent article entitled “No Cadwalader Lawyers Need Apply?” posted on your site.

Unfortunately despite the best intentions of all parties, the situation between Duval & Stachenfeld and Cadwalader has been misconstrued by your recent article.

The facts are these:

D&S and CWT have worked on many transactions together through their respective real estate groups over the years. Ironically, despite D&S being borrower and CWT being lender a friendship has developed between our two law firms — a friendship based on mutual respect and mutual high regard.

When I (the managing partner of D&S) heard about the CWT layoff news my immediate reaction was that I felt very bad for my friends at CWT. It is a great firm suffering from some market turmoil and all of us running law firms know that adverse market forces can happen to any of us.

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My other reaction was that since we are hiring junior lawyers a possible win/win/win would be for us to talk to CWT directly about whether we could hire some of their adversely affected people. This would permit us to find some super-star-high-quality associates – would permit CWT to help its people locate new jobs – and would permit some of the adversely affected associates to get new jobs promptly.

So I did the logical thing and contacted one of my friends at CWT to discuss this. After my discussion I sent a letter to be sent to some of the associates who had the requisite background to fit into our real estate group. It remains to be seen if we will end up hiring CWT associates. My hope is yes.

Since resumes had started to come in (through legal recruiters) I instructed our recruitment coordinator to inform legal recruiters that I would not be accepting resumes through legal recruiters due to our close relationship with CWT. I thought it appropriate to let the legal recruiters know this promptly to avoid misunderstandings with them about recruitment fees.
Apparently one of the legal recruiters saw fit to forward the letter to your website and apparently this has been misinterpreted as a slight to CWT – that we are not interested in hiring from CWT for some unknown reason.

Bottom line – as the facts show above – it is exactly the opposite. We think extremely highly of CWT and its attorneys and for that reason are looking forward to the opportunity to possibly interview some of their highly-regarded associates.

I do hope you will publish this letter. Regardless of your feelings towards D&S or CWT, I think the effect of your publication is to smear associates at CWT who are probably having enough troubles right now. Certainly we at D&S are clearly not telling CWT associates not to apply for a job at D&S as your article states and, indeed, we are doing the exact opposite.

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Thank you very much for your anticipated even- handed reporting of these facts.

Best regards.
BRUCE M. STACHENFELD

Earlier: Attention Tier Two Grads: Duval & Stachenfeld Wants You
Prior ATL coverage of Cadwalader (scroll down)
Cadwalader and Lawyer Cuts: Pursuing a Clear-Eyed Plan? [WSJ Law Blog]

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