Salary Cuts

Nationwide (Possibly Temporary) Salary Cut Watch: Haynes and Boone

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Haynes and Boone deferred its incoming first-year associates to November 30. First-years at the firm will be happy to know that the firm is keeping its promise and they will be starting just after Thanksgiving.
But they won’t be starting at full salary. Incoming associates got the news on Friday. An angry tipster let us know the news:

I’m an incoming first -ear at Haynes and Boone in Texas. We start on the 30th and just got an email saying our salaries will be $145k. This is the first time any of us even knew the firm was considering cutting salaries, and they did it with a bull**** email. So much for being committed to competing with other Texas firms.

But there is a chance that incoming first-years will be paid on a $145K scale for only a month. Above the Law reached out to spokespeople for Haynes and Boone, and they told us that the salary scale for 2010 has not yet been set.
So salaries could be going back up, if that’s where the Texas market settles.
There are actually a couple of interesting things Haynes is doing with its incoming class for their first month on the job.


Haynes and Boone told us that its incoming first years will be doing a lot of training — and not a lot of billing — during their first month at the firm.
The first two weeks will be all training, all the time. The next two weeks — and remember this will be in the middle of the holiday season — will involve “half-days” for the new first years. Half of their time will be spent on client work, and the other half of the day will be more training.
Given that first years are “not going to be doing a whole lot of billing,” the firm thought it was appropriate to pay them at a reduced rate. In January, the firm will revisit its salary structure.
Will these first-year cost savings be passed onto the clients for the billable work that is done by first-years? Apparently the firm still isn’t sure. According to a partner we spoke with, the firm has not yet decided how much to charge for first-year work.
But the partner also told us that Haynes and Boone traditionally bills out first years at a reduced rate for their first six months at the firm anyway. The partner assured us that this year’s first years won’t get billed out at a higher rate than last year’s first years were when that class started.
It can’t be nice to learn about a 10% salary reduction a week before you start work. But there are a lot of deferred associates out there who would gladly take a pay cut in exchange for being allowed to start their careers. And I won’t even mention all of the laid-off attorneys still looking for jobs.
Happy holidays, Haynes and Boone first years. Maybe the firm isn’t putting diamonds in your stocking, but it is a lot better than a lump of sadness waiting for other would-be first years.
Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of salary cuts

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