lightning quick coverage.

Wow, C&B just dealt Heller a death blow. Taking a strong department from a faltering firm after the market implodes is essentially a Chuck Norris roundhouse to the face from Covington to Heller.

Allowing any IP partner or associate, especially a patent associate or partner, is insanity in these times. IP, especially patents, is not affected by the current business climate and may be the only source of litigation for the next few years.

Those geeks have it good for now.

Allowing any IP partner or associate, especially a patent associate or partner, to leave is insanity in these times. IP, especially patents, is not affected by the current business climate and may be the only source of litigation for the next few years.

Those geeks have it good for now.

IP rocks!
Revenge of the nerds.
Geeks save Covington.
Yee haa!

Some of the Heller staff have already created a blog to discuss their options as the firm dissolves:

http://hellerdrone.wordpress.com/

Of all the DC firms, why Covington? Why not Williams & Connolly or Wilmer Hale? I didn't think Cov was particularly good at IP.

Patent prosecutors are suddenly in demand. I have more messages from recruiters since beginning of August than all of last year.

Heller to October!

The Heller attorneys are just going to infect Covington with their furious stench.

8 - That's a dumb question. W&C doesn't have a West Coast office. Wilmer already is very strong in IP lit (check out Bill Lee's book of business sometime) and would probably be conflicted out. Besides, I'd guess that both firms would consider these attorneys worse off than what they already have.

This is a great move for Covington. This shores up an area where they were (relatively) weak. A great firm just got better.

im still a student so i am not sure how firms work, are out going partners allowed to contact associates right away or do they have to wait X number of years?

11 - it is nowhere near as bad as the Stink of Human Sadness, now is it?

Heller has/had great people especially the support staff. I can't tell you how many attorney asses I've wiped at Heller and other firms over the past few years, probably back before you were still a money shot on your mother's tw*t that somehow got through.

this story broke almost 24 hours ago.

14 -- Class act. You must have been an absolute pleasure to work with.

Good luck finding some more "attorney asses" to wipe. Your winning attitude will shine in any interview!

Who are the 15 that are leaving?

14 partners, not 15, representing about half of Heller's IP lit practice. In San Francisco, Washington, Menlo Park, and San Diego. New Covington offices in Silicon Valley and San Diego. No associates yet, but approx. 30 are expected.

Haslam, Young, Subhedar, Byrnes, Fram, Plimack, Haskett, Markman, Blankenheimer, Carothers, Underwood-Muschamp, Sobin, Browne, and Chiu.

But that's only 14. Is there really someone else (in the first cut)? (Other service partners are being made to interview.)

Seriously, Elie...."Covingtion"?? If you're going to be a professional writer, I'm going to need you to be less lazy.

Is C&B taking over Heller's space on Marsh Road?

20 - Seriously? I'm going to need you to please get a life. It's a blog.

#13 -- technically partners have to wait until they've left the firm to contact associates. So, no, there's no rule that they have to wait a certain number of years. In practice, though, many partners don't even wait until after they leave to ask the associates they work with if the associates would like to jump ship with them. I've never seen a firm actually sue to enforce the rule or take any other kind of action to prevent that behavior.

#22, I'm going to need you to stop being a douche.

IPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIPIP!

In practice, I bet a firm loosing all those partners (and thus all that business) can't keep most of the associates busy anyhow.

And what is a firm that just lost 15 IP partners going to do with 15 IP associates anyways?

I hate 20.

20 - I'm not 22, but I believe you're the douche.

Elie, tighten it up so as to get the whiners (e.g., 20) off your back.

I hate 20.

29- I don't necessarily hate 20, but I can see 22 and 24's point. And I'm also not 27.

Seconding #2, seriously Elie, notwithstanding your impending felony charge, which I admit probably took some time out of your day, you gotta be quicker on the uptake. You hyped this meeting yesterday afternoon, and then forgot to cover it this afternoon. It took your commenters to break the news hours ago! Did Lat take too long correcting your grammar and spelling mistakes?

-WIP-W-AIP

19: dale rice?

Gotta feel sorry for all those English Lit, PoliSci majors. Patents is where it's at!

IP Rocks!

Covingtion? A typo in the word that is the primary theme of the post?

Not only was this reported by several legal new organizations YESTERDAY, but you have to add insult to injury.

Seriously, Elie, sack up.

Dont feel sorry for me, I actually get laid.

Patent prosecutors are not in demand.
Most patent prosecution work is outsourced.
Patent litigators however are in demand.

FORTY-SEVENTH!

Tard.

FACT - IP associates get laid more often than any other type of associate.

31,
Sorry to tell you, but you've got the wrong Elie Mystal.

36 is woefully incorrect. Patent prosecution is very difficult to outsource due to export control.

41 = Cliff Claven

23- Not always. When a group I was with announced they were leaving my prior firm they were allowed to talk to associates. My prior firm allowed them to do so because there would have been no partners w/ business left at that office to support the associates. But generally you are right.

23- Not always. When a group I was with announced they were leaving my prior firm they were allowed to talk to associates. My prior firm allowed them to do so because there would have been no partners w/ business left at that office to support the associates. But generally you are right.

42, He is right. You need a foreign filing license from the patent office even before sending out the patent application text to Canada!

23- Not always. When a group I was with announced they were leaving my prior firm they were allowed to talk to associates. My prior firm allowed them to do so because there would have been no partners w/ business left at that office to support the associates. But generally you are right.

43, 44, 46-- what was that?

Fact. A black bear is better than a brown bear.

Here's why this blog sucks now: Elie has no idea what he is writing about, can't spell or fact check, is slow on the uptake, teases stories and doesn't follow up, and has no experience in the real biglaw world. The effect of this, besides a sucky blog, is that we readers have no confidence in what he says. At least Lat worked for a real firm...

Wait - what is "Covingtion"? Are they related to Covington? Of Covington & Burling?

36 is a bitter OCI candidate that got passed over by all the firms he wanted to summer with. He just realized going to law school was a massive mistake, how big of a burden the debt load will be, and is wishing he could be a patent attorney.

#11- blow me.

Heller claims they won't go out Brobeck style but it sure is looking bad...sadly, a good firm will destruct shortly.

Heller has been an amazing place to work (I've been with HEWM on both the West and East Coasts) and sincerely appreciate this opportunity. However, I must say, I'm pissed with Management for their lack of communication in the last few years. As far as I'm concerned, Matt and gang all owe us a big fat apology. Bastards.

Fact: Elie is a black bear.

Fact. Grammar is a brown bear.

43, 44, 46-- here. Sorry about the multiple posts. Didn't mean to do that.

Seriously, I have to wonder about this IP hype. Is it just because lawyers have noticed that there's not going to be so much M&A and finance work to be done any more?

My guess is that IP litigation will stay the same as it did over the last couple of years. And partners moving from one firm to the other doesn't mean that there's more work just because they're moving.

And by the way, many companies don't even have their inventions patented anymore because once the patent file is published, it's easier for copycats to copy the patented invention. Good luck pursuing them in China...

Seriously, I have to wonder about this IP hype. Is it just because lawyers have noticed that there's not going to be so much M&A and finance work to be done any more?

My guess is that IP litigation will stay the same as it did over the last couple of years. And partners moving from one firm to the other doesn't mean that there's more work just because they're moving.

And by the way, many companies don't even have their inventions patented anymore because once the patent file is published, it's easier for copycats to copy the products covered by the patent. Good luck pursuing your rights in China...

56: Re China, for goods imported into the US (a.k.a. the world's largest single-country economy) there is this thing called the ITC. Goods produced in China, Taiwan, etc. and imported into the US can be stopped by the ITC. This means even MORE work for IP lit lawyers. Heller (now Covington) happens to have a very strong ITC practice.

45, not sure what you are talking about. US applications can be drafted anywhere, so long as the application is filed by someone with a reg number. A foreign filing license is required only if you are seeking to transmit technical information for filing a patent application in a foreign office. Export controls, however, may apply if the technology at issue is controlled, as stated by 41.

And patent litigation is fairly unaffected by financial ups and downs. I have been doing patent lit at BigLaw since 1998, and have only once experienced a slight downturn, during 2002. Other than that, I have been more than fully employed my entire career. This is particularly true if you can get into ANDA patent litigation. Drug companies are more than willing to throw $5 million dollars in legal fees for a product that generates $10 million dollars a day in revenues.

To the tipster:

Congratulations, you've now guaranteed that the next time C&B has anything to announce associates will find out through the press instead of from the management committee. I hope you're less cavalier with our clients' secrets.

60 - This news has been out for 24 hours, long before your double secret meeting.

61 - which just means there's no reason whatsoever to be a "tipster."

This is great news. Covington already was awesome at running document reviews. The new IP group will just make them that much stronger.

I heard that the Heller group also spoke with some folks from King & Spalding

But they were so turned off by the personalities of the folks there that they passed on the "opportunity"

How bad can the folks from King & Spalding be ?

Can anyone elaborate ?

I heard that the Heller group also spoke with some folks from King & Spalding

But they were so turned off by the personalities of the folks there that they passed on the "opportunity"

How bad can the folks from King & Spalding be ?

Can anyone elaborate ?

Finnegan, FTW.

For Patent Lit info:

1. number of patents issued increases substantially each year.

2. International marketplace and ITC make for more patent lit work.

3. Add 1 + 2 and you got steady increasing work that is rarely affected by economic fluctuations. Most major patent lit groups work with electronics and/or biotechnology. Neither one of these industries stop with Reaseach and Developement just because I banks and the mortage industry is tanking.

67, not to mention all the doc review that litigation generates, at which Covington truly excels.

Patent prosecution associates wear teflon in economies like these. Take the patent bar and join the party -- btw, to the political science majors, you can't take the patent bar just because your softball undergraduate major had the word science in it! HAHAHAHA!

Patent "litigators" are just patent attorney hacks if they don't have a registration number. IP RULES!

59 knows what he's talking about.

Heller sucked anyway... I wonder what took so long. Heller should go the way of Lehman and just disappear. Losers.

Did you all hear that Heller advised on a new W hotel?

Hey Lat,

With the economy tanking and all these posts about "how will this affect BIGLAW" I think you should do a post for law students on what practice groups they should be focusing on trying to get into (Patent, Bankruptcy, T&E, etc.)

Just thought it would be helpful.

-
A first year BIGLAW associate in patent lit! (boy am I happy with my choice at the moment).

I was on a patent case at a big firm and wanted to kill myself it was so boring. Must be because of my lightweight undergraduate degree in the humanities.

Patent lit is fascinating if you're a science geek. Cutting edge, state of the art work. Gotta love science and technology though. I work in ANDA litigation and love it. I'm constantly challeged with complex science and find working with the experts incredibly interesting. I was a scientist before a lawyer though, so I know most lawyers don't find the 3 dimensional structuring of proteins that interesting, even though I find it fascinating.

69 - Patent attorneys who try to do lit work can screw things up badly for the client - same as pure litigators who try to be the lead attorney on a patent case. Best case scenario is to have a mixture of pure lit folks and patent folks on a team lead by a litigator with an engineering background.

BTW, you must have many, many friends, no?

69 - Patent attorneys who try to do lit work can screw things up badly for the client - same as pure litigators who try to be the lead attorney on a patent case. Best case scenario is to have a mixture of pure lit folks and patent folks on a team lead by a litigator with an engineering background.

BTW, you must have many, many friends, no?

69 - Patent attorneys who try to do lit work can screw things up badly for the client - same as pure litigators who try to be the lead attorney on a patent case. Best case scenario is to have a mixture of pure lit folks and patent folks on a team lead by a litigator with an engineering background.

BTW, you must have many, many friends, no?

Patent lit is difficult, incredibly complex, and boring. Avoid that work at all costs.

75, you were so facinated by the science that you quit working as a scientist and went to law school. You must not have been a very good scientist.
.
For all of you idiots praising the virtues of patent law, wait until the patent reform act is passed and the latest court decisions minimizing patent rights, that will surely kill the business. Then you'll be wishing you were a corporate lawyer.

who even wants to work in any of these poop holes. Moving from a dead firm to dying ones is not a plan

http://endofesq.com/?p=167

80, bitter much?

That act will never pass in any substantial form to limit patent rights. Look at who owns most patents retard.

36, 59, and 70 are wrong, wrong, wrong!

You CANNOT export any information for the purpose of drafting a US application without a foreign filing license. Go ahead and google "Private Pair" and click the first link. See that BIS disclaimer and checkbox under the login? US Patent prosecution is very difficult to outsource. Sit down.

83 - relax. You are right that it is difficult to export patent prosecution (contrary to 36's whiff). But the laws are not as clear-cut as you say with "CANNOT."

Have a look here: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2008/07/outsourcing-of.html

I remember applying for a 1L SA gig at Heller several years ago and being required to fill out a long form online (something no other firm I applied to required). Only after I spent the time filling out and submitting said form did a page come up informing me that Heller would only be hiring 1Ls for some special program that was only open to certain minorities. I'm happily employed elsewhere now, but still can't help smiling when I read that the firm who explicitly rejected me based on my race is about to go down in flames. So long, suckas, that karma's a bitch!

Well I for one hope that the remaining partners (or the trustee) at Heller sue Covington or Covingiton or whatever else you want to call it. Those defecting partners breached some serious fiduciary duties to their former partners and Heller, and I hope they pay. Perhaps you folks at Covington should have Haslam and Fram recount their stirring speeches they gave at Heller's partner retreat. Both of those men, ironically, were a huge part of Heller's leadership so the blame game should start with them. At the same time they were telling us to hang together, they were engineering a deal they knew would cause the demise of Heller and the loss many, many people's jobs and capital. This little post on this silly blog will not be the last we hear of this.

85 - I did the same thing many years ago, only to find out at the end that there were "no current openings." Too funny.

83, you are the one who is wrong, check 35 U.S.C. 184 or MPEP 140. Foreign filing licenses are only needed for *surprise* foreign filings. They are not needed to transmit information abroad for the purposes of filing a United States patent application.

No, 86, the blame starts and ends with Matt Larabee. He managed to guide this firm from an all-time peak when he took office to the brink of bankruptcy. Worst. Leader. Ever.

It's really too bad. Heller always struck me as a very humane firm. In addition to the many partner defections reported here, it looks like Gibson is slowly cherry picking from the securities litigation group.

http://www.gibsondunn.com/News/Pages/GibsonDunnAddsSecuritiesLitigationPartnerinSanFrancisco.aspx

http://www.gibsondunn.com/News/Pages/SecuritiesLitigationPartnerGeorgeBrownJoinsGibsonDunninSiliconValley.aspx

86 - that's one way to go, if Heller wants to ensure that it will never attract another lateral patner, thus guaranteeing its demise.

Patent lit is difficult, incredibly complex, and boring. Avoid that work at all costs.

Are Covington and Heller members of the same insurance group? If so they've covenanted not to sue each other.... http://www.evilesq.com

you would think Matt Larrabee would step down and hand the keys back over to Barry Levin and let Barry Levin try to get this back together

91, are you high?!? Do you think Heller is going to attract another lateral partner? What planet are you living on?

Heller can't sue Covington over this, just the individual partners who left Heller.

right on the money 89, you would think that Larrabee would turn the keys back over to Levin to hopefully get us out of the mess that we are in, if Levin could do it

91 here, if Heller has any notion of trying to restructure and save itself rather than just dissolving, part of its long-term plan has to contemplate recruiting new partners once it's proven itself to be on firm financial footing.

If the plan is just to dissolve, don't even bother suing. The remaining partners are going to lose a lot, and for what they'll pay in legal fees, it's unlikely to be worth much to each individual partner for the settlement they might possibly get. Not to mention that "You made big speeches to try to save the firm, and then left when it was clear we were in the toilet" doesn't make for compelling legal argument.

Those talking about suing are the bitter left-behinds who are suddenly realizing they're not worth much and want someone else to blame for their inability to carry their own weight.

That's right 85, you ass. Heller is imploding because a sub-moron who couldn't be bothered to read (or was incapable) was inconvenienced a few years ago and now "karma" demands that hundreds of attorneys and staff lose their jobs. Oh, how lucky you are to be so favored by a vegenful God.

Idiots like you lend credence to the rumor that attorneys tend towards Asperger's.

91--no one is going to win any fights on a blog. There are many fine lawyers who I am sure do not share your views. But time will my friend.

I win!

100 here--excuse the typo "time will tell"

89 - it's too simplistic to say that it was Larrabee's fault - period. I was there during Levin's chairmanship and went through the transition to Larrabee's. Levin was a great chairman, charismatic, just what you want in a leader. When it was “announced” that Larrabees was going to be the next chair (no huge surprise) everyone (me included) thought he was going to be great, after all, he’d been Levin's right-hand-man for the six year's of Levin's chairmanship as vice-chair of the litigation department. Larrabee is a good guy, smart, clients love him, and from all appearances, it looked like he was going to be a good chairman. Unfortunately, he wasn't quite as strong and decisive as he needed to be/should have been - so you lay that at Larrabee's doorstep – but you can’t solely blame him for what’s happened at Heller. There are too many factors that came in to play: there were a host of "house cleaning" items that Levin didn’t take care of (that Larrabee inherited) like under-performing partners, too many practice areas, the whole VLG-cowboy culture (who were impossible to manage)the late/expensive venture into London, etc. Combine all that with the settling of a number of big litigation matters, lots of big leases and expensive office finish-outs in NY, LA, HK, London, etc. and a relatively weak business development function/process/culture, and you can see where all that can lead to some pretty big problems – problems that were not just Larrabee’s fault – but, as the chairman, he had to deal with them.

I win!

99--that was good. I could not have said it any better.

101/104--saying that you "win" on a blog--dosen't really make it so. Sorry.

90 - old news, so old it has whiskers

69, 76

I am a third year patent litigator in BigLaw. Though me and the majority of my coworkers DID take the patent bar and get a PTO registration number, it actually has almost nothing to do with patent litigation. Its mostly prosecution procedure that has little relevance to Federal litigation.

I think for litigators the patent bar is more about marketing yourself and your firm than about substantive value.

69 ,76

I am a 3rd year patent litigator in Biglaw.

Like maybe 2/3 of my coworkers, I did take the patent bar and get a PTO registration number. It actually has VERY little to do with litigation work though, and is more about marketing yourself and your firm than it is about substantive value for us. The patent bar is mostly about patent prosecution procedure, what forms and fees to file when, and is of little use in Federal court. What little "substantive" law there is on the PTO exam I kinda knew already from litigation + my law school courses.

109 - while a reg number isn't required for patent lit, it is certainly helpful. I certainly would prefer someone with a reg number, or at least experience in prosecution, on a case than those without it. It is very important to know what goes into a prosecution in order to effectively litigate a patent case.

O, and I win!

English/linguistics majors are they only ones who grasp the nuances of and make original arguments in trademark and copyright law. Former science students/scientists who left Ph.d programs because their experiments failed or abandoned the pure pursuit of scients are sell-out drones.

English/linguistics majors are they only ones who grasp the nuances of and make original arguments in trademark and copyright law. Former science students/scientists who left Ph.d programs because their experiments failed or abandoned the pure pursuit of science are sell-out drones.

103, you are probably right about Heller having "expensive office leases" in New York. Heller NYC is currently in one of the new towers in Times Square.

Heller's idiot New York Office has changed office space twice since Heller DREAMED that it was going to be this big up and coming New York Presence. I'll bet money that Heller NYC probably has three to four times more office space than its current New York Statt warrants because that New York Office was still hoping that all of these Big Money Making Partners from New York Firms were going to move over to Heller.

Heller's problems are the result of Heller's New York Office - Heller's biggest mistake was merging with that little shit NY Law Firm that became Heller's New York Office.

There were old partners in Heller's New York Office who never seemed to be working on anything billable, EVER.

In addition have a not of Partners not doing any billable work, Heller's mindset appeared to be that if it continued to hire a lot of lawyers and LOOK LIKE a big New York Law Firm that it would convince money making Partners at other firms to move over to Heller.

Heller's New York Office and Heller's dream of being a big presence in New York IS what has caused Heller's problems.

If Heller Ehrman SF had merged with "Howard Darby in NY" instead of Heller merging with that idiot little NY firm Heller did merge with, clearly, things would probably be different for Heller now. "Howard Darby" merged with Covington.

If Heller Ehrman fired everone in its New York Office today, Heller could probably find a merger partner. The word had been out about Heller's New York Office since at least 2002.

110 - Yeah I mean all things being equal, its better to have a registration # than not for a prosecutor, but I still don't think it adds much value.

Now at least a bit of prosecution experience I agree IS valuable, but thats something different from studying for and taking the PTO exam in and of itself.

The head partner I work under doesn't have a PTO# and he has more money than god. Ditto for half the patent lit partners at my old firm.

In my personal observation, the younger patent litigators have their PTO # more than then older ones, though I admit thats not a statistically relevant sample. Its nice to have, but more show than substance.

111 Thinks English majors bring something special tothe table. How cute!!

They call it "soft" IP for a reason. Trademarks and copyright ARE fun subjects, but kinda anyone can do them.

Heller never should have left the West Coast. They never had the client base to come East, and knew nothing about building a practice in NY/DC. I hope it was fun while it lasted.

113 – I think you’ve captured a lot of Heller’s NY problem pretty well. The NY firm they merged with (Werbel & Carnelutti) was a decent “boutique” and while a number of those partners should have been put out to pasture LONG ago, a few of them were pretty god lawyers with decent books of business (Paul Downs, Steve Davis, Dick Martin – who recently moved to Orrick – Larry Zweifach). One of their biggest mistakes was hiring Joe McLaughlin – what a joke – and an expensive one at that. He was head of the office for a while – and that caused a lot of the problems with retention, growth, etc. The failure of the NY wasn’t all his fault – but a lot of it was/is due to him being such an poor manager – and no one in Heller’s Management (Levin and Larrabee included) would ever tell him “no.”

Heller Vermin,

Grade snobs with no books of business.

Check ya later,

Guys at my high school used to transmit tehcnical information abroad for the purposes of preparing United States patent applications. It was no big deal.

Guys at my high school used to transmit tehcnical information abroad for the purposes of preparing United States patent applications all the time. It was no big deal.

Does anyone care to provide a concise explanation for why Heller has lost so many partners in the past two years?

121-

Take five minutes to skim the comments, there are several fairly concise explanations. You could probably skim the last 30 comments and get the answers you're looking for.

The thought occurred to me this evening that some of the ip litigation associates at Heller might feel guilty about leaving the rest of the firm in the lurch and departing with a group of shareholders that are singled-handedly responsible for jeopardizing Heller. If you do feel a little guilty, you should know that the rest of the associates at the firm do not judge you because they would probably take the same opportunity that you, by chance, now have. We recognize how hard many of you have worked while some of us have languished (be assured, most have not languished by choice, and others have worked quite hard). But, soon to be former Heller ip associates, you might think about these ex-Heller partners that you are following and whether they are people you trust to advance your career. If they would do this to their colleagues (in some cases of many, many years), what might they do to you if push comes to shove?

Balls.

Balls... down dare in Darrow County. You think they need a sheriff?

Balls? It is just an opinion.

123, no truer words have been spoken!

Heller IP Associates - 123 has a good point, but if I were you, I'd take you shareholders' offer, keep drawing a paycheck in the short run, and THEN look for another job on your own terms. Just because IP Lit screwed the rest of us doesn't mean you have to let them screw you right now. Just do me a favor and stick it to them when it will hurt them.

123, that's really unfair. It's completely ridiculous to behave as if this one event undid something that was previously going swimmingly. Obviously management screwed things up royally for quite some time to get the firm to a place where (a) it needed to merge in order to stay afloat and (b) its ability to merge hinged on 4-5 IP shareholders' books of business. You might recall that in the past year, tons of other big-name shareholders with big books of business have also left, whether because they were turned off by the Levin/Larrabee "leadership" style or single-minded and quixotic mission to expand to behemoth size and compete with the Skaddens of the world (who in their right mind ever thought that was anything but laughable?) or because they didn't like the firm's future prospects. Do you similarly question all of those folks' characters and think of them as irredeemable backstabbers?

Now, I agree that the timing of this was unfortunate (though the policy committee was well aware that the IP group was shopping itself around before this Mayer thing ever came about), but I don't know how you can possibly attribute more blame to these 14 shareholders (many of them junior partners with no client bases who really don't actually affect the equation) than you do to Larrabee and his peanut gallery. That's mistaking the last straw for the entirety of the problem.

And seriously: were you really excited about working at the satellite office of a nearly 3,000-person firm (which the resulting Mayer entity would have more or less become, depending on how many Heller attorneys got laid off as part of that deal)?? If so, it's strange that you would have chosen to come to Heller (instead of Latham or Skadden or some other humongous firm with no culture other than "frat boy") in the first place. In any case, you can still do that now -- plenty of huge firms are hiring.

Finally, if the Mayer deal had gone through, together with the "fat-trimming" mass layoffs of Heller associates that would have surely accompanied it, would you be advising all those associates fortunate enough to avoid termination and get brought along in the merger to question the characters of the shareholders who merged?

I think you're grossly oversimplifying the issues because it's convenient and comforting to have a discrete and identifiable group of scapegoats.

Thanks 128, we all know how advantageous it is to have some random 2-month stint on your resume (especially following time spent at a Brobeck or a Heller).

Timing is everything.

Uh, 123, in case you didn't notice, as in every other large law firm, *most* senior associates at Heller, regardless of practice group, are not elevated to shareholder and are subsequently asked to leave. Unless you've become indispensable to a partner who wields a lot of power, you're foolish and naive to blindly trust that you won't be thrown under the bus eventually. That's how law firms work.

130: 128 here. Look, if you can have the job you want in two months, then by all means, take you chances with getting severance, keeping your insurance, and dropping back into that deep and beautiful job market. I was merely suggesting that it might be silly to allow paranoia to kick you into such an uncertain situation. I understand how the duplicity shown by the IP shareholders makes working with them as a long term career move seem unappealing. But for the window of a year or two, you essentially buy the ability to be choosy in making your next career move.

Of course, even heading over to C&B for a two month stint is hardly random, and any person hiring you will likely understand that any actual randomness in the wake of a firm-wide disaster is to be accepted. I haven't passed any former Brobeck attorneys on the corner begging for change; the Heller crash has at least been smoother.

Hey 129 - it's simple cause and effect. The departure of the IP group resulted in the cessation of merger talks with Mayer Brown. They were a valuable asset that MB wanted to acquire, and I would wager that at our pre-attrition strength they would be a prerequisite for any deal. That is not to say that but for their departure the merger would have worked. If it had, there would still be layoffs, but they would likely not be as deep and they would have happened on better terms. Had the IP group stayed and the merger still fell apart, Heller would have a larger runway to either a) find additional merger partners or b) conduct a more orderly winding up of business.

I agree that management has taken a powerfully painful toll on the firm, and the attrition of shareholders over the last two years left us in an essentially untenable situation. There are, however, tipping points - psychological, financial, and contractual - and the departure of the IP group tipped the firm into a far worse situation.

Was what IP did Machiavellian? Yep. Perhaps that earns a degree of respect. But the vast of majority of us were trying to pull the firm through this time with the least collateral damage as possible. That's why most of us are at Heller. And IP Lit sat in the trench with us until things got ugly. Then they suddenly pulled a pin from a grenade, dropped it, and walked out the door.

Covington Silicon Valley = Vichy Heller.

134, what was the vast majority doing while trying to pull the firm through? They weren't billing. They weren't bringing in clients. They were trying to sell the firm to the highest bidder.

Maybe the IP folks got tired of being pimped around by Larrabee and his crew, and decided to just sell themselves. Better to be your own 'ho than someone else's.

Jesus, 134. You're right about one thing: they did sit in the trenches with everyone else for a few bad years there. Shareholders in other, less-profitable, practice groups were leaving left and right. And IP Lit stuck around and *carried* this firm. No one else was making any money for the firm. Of course it's not the associates fault, but the shareholders in other groups were not doing there jobs. Why don't you put some blame on them? Why don't you put some blame on the 50 shareholders who walked out way before these 14 from the IP Lit group did? Why do you suddenly have so much loyalty to a firm led by a bunch of incompetent fools with a "strategic plan" that was doomed to fail from the start -- and that would have led to a terrible doc review-heavy life for associates had it succeeded ("We have 1500 lawyers and we only do huge cases!")? The revisionist history here is killing me.

sorry: associates = associates'; there = their

-136

In addition to the SH's that took their business and left, what about the ones forced out because their existing clients wouldn't pay Heller-mandated rates? The firms they went to are, I'm sure, quite happy to receive steady work from those clients, at a rate appropriate to the market.

136, didn't revenues and profits grow through 2006? I find it hard to believe IP Lit was the only moneymaking group for the past "few years." Until 2007, a disastrous year for Heller, the firm seemed to be on the right course. Correct me if I'm wrong.

139, things slowed down in the second half of 2006. So change "a few years" to "two years." We're still talking multiple years that the less-than-100-lawyer IP group had the yoke of a money-losing 600-person firm around its neck. It's just wrong that they're getting more blame for leaving now after carrying the firm for two years than they would have gotten had they left at the beginning of the slide (i.e., two years ago).

The IP-centric arguments are self-serving. It was not the only successful group at Heller in the past few years. The small energy practice (which never received much respect at Heller) was successful in Seattle, DC, and lately in Silcon Valley. That group is being courted big-time and will land nicely. At it's true core, that group was never more than 10-15 people.
Now, as for the antitrust practice. . . .well. . . . . .

Yes, the IP group may have been busy over the past few years. But, looking a bit further back, there were times when other groups carried the firm -- antitrust, securities litigation, etc. The difference was that those groups felt that they were doing something for the good of the firm. They recognized that a few years of very hard work are rewarded by a bit more money and the understanding that other groups would have to pick up the slack at a later time.

All groups can't be busy all the time. The IP Lit group talking about how they carried the firm is utter bullshit. The firm existed before and thrived before IP Lit was even a viable PG. Give it up.

139/140- you're both wrong. revenue (and I'm not talking the bullshit PPP/ "official" results) had slowed down well before that, back in 2004. by the first round of layoffs in '05, they were already in trouble.