Allen Matkins Makes Another Salary Cut, And More Layoffs
There have been a number of firms that have cut associate salaries. But there have not been many firms that have needed to slash salaries twice this year. Allen Matkins associates appears to be in their own personal corner of sadness.
A tipster reports:
For the second time this year, Allen Matkins has laid off lawyers and cut salaries for those who still have a job. 2 lawyers were laid off in Los Angeles. I am not sure how many in other offices, but I know there were more. Salary cuts were also part of the package. Associates untouched by the last round of salary cuts were not so lucky this time. Cuts ranged between 15% and 30%. … This cut occurred Thursday October 15. Cuts are effective November 1, 2009. Nice holiday gift isn’t it.
Allen Matkins has not responded to our multiple requests for comment. In terms of layoffs, other tipsters have reported a few involuntary attorney departures. 2nd year associates seem to be the hardest hit.
Multiple tipsters are also reporting the salary cut news.
Following along with all of the Allen Matkins cuts is a little bit confusing; let me walk you through it after the jump.
In March, Allen Matkins was one of the first firms to adopt the hybrid tough love package of salary cuts and associate layoffs. The firm reduced its first year salary from $160K to $145K. More senior associates saw their salary cut between 15% and 30%.
In May, we reported that most mid-level associates at Allen Matkins ended up with a 20% salary cut.
Putting all the cuts together makes for one huge salary cut for Allen Matkins associates that are low on hours. One tipster puts it this way:
Associates and paralegals told they will now be receiving only 60% of original salary. If hours are made up they will be paid the 40% at end of fiscal year
A 40% cut could push some associates under $100,000 in salary.
Sorry Allen Matkins employees. I don’t know what to tell you.
Earlier: Nationwide Layoff Watch: Allen Matkins Continues the Layoff & Salary Cuts ‘Super Combo’
Allen Matkins: Salary Cuts Hit Paralegals Too
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Comments
What is an Allen Matkins?
We need to bomb China back to the stoneage!
-DOJ Secure
Elie, I realize this is a blog by lawyers for lawyers, but moaning about someone making less than $100K is unseemly. Lawyers have been overpaid for years; salary cuts are an appropriate, minor corrective.
Another round of firings for another group of dilatory and nescient wretches.
Cogs: if you had worked harder, you would not have been fired.
Time to revive the "simple suggestion" shtick.
I honestly never hear of Mr. Allen Matkins before. This site really getting desparate for news. Who is he anyway?
As I mentioned in an earlier post, clients are starting to wonder what the hell it is we do that deserves $400/ hour. In my industry, high tech, the clients are realizing they don't pay their best and brightest design engineers half that much. Get ready to come back to earth and be paid like CPAs or notaries.
4 is right. The only people at my firm who have been laid off are lazy.
Elie - EPIC FAIL for referencing PE and his "hybrid tough love" model in your story. Don't further swell his already bloated head and ego.
That's what you get for being so heavily leveraged in real estate work. Allen Matkins does primarily real estate transactional and litigation work.
Evan here, writing from Hong Kong. The past week has been very busy, thus it has taken a couple of weeks to put up another post.
The number of US associate openings continues to increase in Asia, especially in Hong Kong and Greater China, and especially in now-busy capital markets groups.
Let's face it. There are still going to be 9-12 months of continued contraction and layoffs in the labor market. I count myself very lucky to still have a job. The hours have certainly gotten longer. I work a lot, and when I'm not doing that I'm banging my rock hard girlfriend.
Jake,
Once you graduate and get a full-time job, then you can start commenting about the working world.
In the meantime, call your mother...she wants to know what time to pick you up from school today.
I had a callback with AM during OCI this year. Seemed like a nice firm, but they were really pushing how they were "trying to diversify away from real estate" -- no kidding. I don't think they can diversify faster than RE work can evaporate.
Forgive me for asking, but is this law firm accredited by the ABA? I've never heard of it. Thanks.
13: fired lawyer (or one who got a salary cut) bitter b/c JaKe is right.
Two words: Promissory Estoppel.
Does anyone know/care about Allen Matkins?
Firms which repeatedly lay off lawyers are going to get burnt in the end.
There are some terrible firms out there, and things are not going to get better for them. Latham and Watkins, for example, is the new Baker and McKenzie or DLA Piper.
4 has a full time job photocopying balls.
I'm sick of all this crying about pay cuts. I will not tolerate associates that think its about them, when its about the firm, and we cannot make decisions that cost the firm and then go home and just be nonchalant. No. You now what, this is how I believe, I'm from the old school. I believe this: I would rather pay associates under $100k and just get penalized all the way until we got to do something else, rather then cater to some pampered T14 law review type when I know that that person is not sold out to be a part of this firm. Its more about them then it is about the firm! I cannot bill with them, cannot litigate with them, cannot work with them, can't do it. I want workers, I want people that want to work.
I'm almost ashamed to admit this, but Mrs. Lat makes me laugh.
Mission Accomplished!
"A 40% could push some associates under $100,000 in salary." A 40% what???
19, sorry you got no-offered at Baker and DLA. That was quite an effort on your part to take a story about Allen Matkins cutting salaries and turning it into a vitriol about three totally unrelated firms.
Bitter little bear, bitter little plebe.
Hey Singletary - how about winning a game outside the NFC West this weekend?
-- Niners fan
Allen Matkins, do you believe in miracles?
All this sounds more than reasonable. Associates are a dime a dozen. It's rediculous to pay them so much, what with all the bodies ready to take the places of the ones who won't accept huge pay cuts. $65K per year is more than sufficient as a starting salary. If you can't live on that amount, then fuck you all the way to hell.
Considering that the Dow is once again sliding below 10,000, signaling the end of the bear market rally, Allen Matkins is acting prudently in cutting salaries and staff. The demand for legal services, especially in real estate, will not recover until the second quarter of 2010.
Hey 26,
Do you know what my favorite part of the game is? The opportunity to play.
I did not read anything about severance in the above post, but I am sitting anxiously by my telephone awaiting a call from Allen Matkins. BTW - my beeper number is 800-555-1212.
they gemërkin der layoffs und die salary gekøttën. mork mork mork!
18-No. Nobody cares. This post should be deleted. What are they, Vault 500?
Please use the word balls in every sentence. Otherwise balls look for an alternative serious site where to post.
blah blah, things will recover next year, blah blah,.. yeah, okay. maybe if you keep saying it over and over it will eventually come true.
people hvae been saying this shit every few months since 2008.. oh things are just right around the corner.
fucking salesmen.
Jake, how clever of you to post at 4 and then compliment yourself by posting 8 and 16. No wonder you are on law review.
The paychecks at Allen Matkins aren't getting smaller, they're just getting more selective.
FifthThird is a large bank holding company in Cincinatti.
-2
We are currently investigating the threat that China poses. There is no reason to rush our decision to bomb China back into the stone age. We will confer with our Generals, the men on the ground, our creditors, and of course our Czars before we come to a decision. It will just take some time before we come to a decision.
-White House Secure
Why is it that no one gets fired anymore? They all get "laid off?" I'm not saying that everyone was fired, but cutting two people, that's not a layoff, that's getting rid of the underperformers. It used to happen every year, at every firm, regardless. It didn't stop just because the economy was down ...
The ship be sinking...
Tipster's reports are not entirely accurate. AM cut select associate salaries, not salaries across the board. Cuts appear to have been based on hours and department. Essentially 100% of litigation and related practice group associates will receive full compensation, based on the $160k pay scale. Real estate associates have clearly not been as lucky.
42 -
Wait, so litigation associates who have work will be paid full salary while people in transactional groups w/ no work will be paid less?
Allen Matkins is my new favorite law firm.
43 - it wouldn't be if your salary had been cut to inflate PPPs artificially in a down year. Last year's AM average PPP was something like $750k. What, is some partner going to lose his house over 30% of my salary?
I agree, 40. And what's with calling these "layoffs" anyway? Layoffs were used by factories and plants during slow periods. The idled workers were sometimes called back to work when business picked up. The affected workers were "laid off," as opposed to fired. Why don't we stop saying people are being laid off when they are actually being fired? The law firms are not calling anyone back, ever.
42, agreed. Compensate the people who are profitable (like me).
I'm getting tired of picking up the slack for underperforming transactional associates and PARTNERS. I am hoping my firm has the cajones at the end of the year to bitch-slap some of the partners whose books have gone down a lot. Last year, they were afraid to do it because those guys had been so profitable in the past. But they were also compensated for it in the past. Two sucky years in a row, they need to take a big hit.
39 is hilarious. Confering with "our creditors" regarding the threat that China poses. Good stuff.
39 is hilarious. Confering with "our creditors" regarding the threat that China poses. Good stuff.
Hey Jake, time to get your thesauras off the shelf again and find some new words - you're starting to overuse nescient and dilatory. Like in every post. Seriously.
14 = JaKe's dad
/obviously
This will keep happening until firms LOWER BILLABLE RATES.
Well, it is a real estate firm. However, they have spent a lot of money of late hiring biz dev, marketing, diversity leaders - when will they look at ROI?
allen matkins associates now earn the same amount or less than their counterparts in the same areas who skipped law school and went into engineering out of undergrad. haha.
Lawyers suck shit through a straw.
Allen Matkins is in serious trouble. The cut is a prelude to mass associate cuts in the next 3-6 months. They may be looking to organize a sale of at least part of the firm.
55, I call bullshit. I just interviewed last week for a lit position at Allen Matkins. Apparently didn't get the job, but whatever, they seemed very busy.
56 - Oh yeah, those AM folks got their nose to the grindstone. They are buried! Just buried, I say! As if you could tell *&%$ from an interview...
56 - Oh yeah, those AM folks got their nose to the grindstone. They are buried! Just buried, I say! As if you could tell *&%$ from an interview...
56 - Oh yeah, those AM folks got their nose to the grindstone. They are buried! Just buried, I say! As if you could tell *&%$ from an interview...
Big firm lawyers have long been overpaying young associates . Salary cuts and layoffs were inevitable. It's time for young lawyers to get real. You just don't deserve a big salary until you have some skills. No first or second year lawyers I have ever known was worth $160K or $145K.
Double posters lose any credibility the instant their duplicate post pops up. Triple posters should just be shot.
60 - You are clearly an AM partner. Thanks for the heads up. See you at work.
60-The first years who have been at work for a month are making $145k while senior associates are making $110k. Apparently AM doesn't follow your logic.
60-The first years who have been at work for a month are making $145k while senior associates are making $110k. Apparently AM doesn't follow your logic.
Never heard of this firm -- and only 2 people laid off -- the economy must be improving if ATL has to resort to reporting this to keep up there negative news trend