Akin Gump, Musical Chairs, Partner Profits

Partners Leaving Akin Gump

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Akin Gump has laid off staff and rescinded offers to summer associates, but those moves are mere details in the grand scheme of things. The American Lawyer reports that Akin Gump lost more partners than any other firm the publication tracks:

Akin lost 17 percent of its partners to competitors, small firms, in-house positions, and government jobs. Some of those defections were anticipated–fallout from strategic shifts in the firm’s practice groups and management structure. But others were a surprise.

Back in August, we reported on a rash of Akin Gump defections, but the overall numbers are still surprising.

Which offices were hardest hit? Apparently, this kind of thing does happen in Texas.

More after the jump, including an update from the Blog of the Legal Times.


American Lawyer reports that there were major partner defections in Houston:

The Houston office saw more upheaval. Ten energy partners, some specializing in infrastructure development projects or land use, left the 75-lawyer office after the energy group put a premium on climate change and regulatory matters. But the Houston office did add energy partner David Elder–the only 2008 lateral partner hire–from Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell.

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Infrastructure kind of sounds important and lucrative just at the moment.

Akin Gump’s Silicon Valley office was also hard hit in 2008:

Last summer, Akin’s entire 14-lawyer Silicon Valley office, which advised electronics, software, semiconductor, and medical device companies, decamped for Alston & Bird. “At Akin, the firm culture was driven by the bottom line,” says Steven Hemminger, a partner who joined from White & Case in 2007, only to depart a year later for Alston. “Their management made a poor decision that patent prosecution and counseling were too low-margin.”

You don’t often hear partners complaining about too much focus on the bottom line.

Of course, according to Akin’s chairman Bruce McLean, all of this “streamlining” is great!

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While losing 59 partners hasn’t been easy, McLean, who has been Akin’s chairman for the past 16 years, expects that the slimmed-down practice areas will pay off. In 2007 the firm saw profits per partner fall nearly 7 percent to slightly more than $1.2 million, putting it sixtieth on The Am Law 200 partner profit charts.

But in early January he predicted that profits per partner grew as much as 10 percent in 2008 as a result of the shake-up, “What we are seeing is a slimmed-down firm generating more profits,” says McLean. At least, that’s the plan.

Yay!

Update (11:55): The Blog of the Legal Times adds some more color on how Akin’s partner defections are not affecting the firm’s bottom line:

McLean adds that the partners who left the firm did so at their own choosing and were not the contributors some believed them to be.

“You can’t believe everything you read. Just because someone says, or a press release says, they’re a rainmaker, doesn’t mean they’re making rain. Sometimes it’s more like fog,” McLean says.

Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

Jumping Ship [American Lawyer]

Akin Gump Reports Growth [The BLT: Blog of the Legal Times]

Earlier: Musical Chairs: The Akin Gump Defections

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