Akin Gump, Musical Chairs

Musical Chairs: Another Partner Leaves Akin Gump

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Akin Gump is dealing with another partner defection. AmLaw Daily is reporting that a big time litigator is leaving Akin Gump for Quinn Emanuel:

Andrew Rossman, former cohead of litigation at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, kept bumping into lawyers from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges on various cases, and came away impressed every time.

So Rossman, who has lived in and around New York city for his entire life, decided to leave Akin Gump this week to take a spot in Quinn’s growing New York office.

Rossman was more impressed with the Quinn lawyers he “kept bumping into” than his colleagues he worked with every day at Akin Gump? Ouch.

Some sort of an exodus seems to be taking place at Akin. The firm lost 17% of its partners last year.

More details after the jump.


AmLaw describes the flight of Akin partners this way:

[Andrew Rossman] says the choice to move is unrelated to Akin’s recent hemorrhaging of partners; the firm lost 59 partners in 2008, more than any firm we tracked here at The American Lawyer. And many of them left with unhappy feelings for the firm’s decision to reduce some practices that management considered less lucrative (such as patent licensing and individual plaintiff employment defense) in favor of an emphasis on the New York office, according to this story from the February issue of The American Lawyer.

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Well, at least it doesn’t have anything to do with Akin’s decision to (kind of) unfreeze associate salaries.

Akin Gump pulled in about $1.2 million in profits per partner according to AmLaw. Quinn takes in $3.3 million. Maybe it is as simple as that?

Another Akin Defection: Cohead of Litigation Heading to Quinn Emanuel [AmLaw Daily]

Earlier: Partners Leaving Akin Gump

Akin Gump: Salary Unfreeze Update

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