Yesterday, we reported that K&L Gates cut salaries for its incoming associates. The salary cut is just for a few of the firm’s many offices, but it looks like I got the offices wrong. The firm still hasn’t responded to my request for clarification, but tipsters who work at K&L Gates have helped set the record straight.
Yesterday’s report was based on phone calls the firm made to incoming associates over the weekend. But K&L Gates also held meetings on Friday with associates in the firm’s various offices. The salary cuts on incoming associates will only affect four of the firm’s offices: Charlotte, Dallas, Raleigh, and Seattle. But the cuts will affect each office differently. A tipster reports:
They cut salaries for incoming first years in only 4 of the 33 offices, and the salary cuts depended upon which city they’re in. For instance, Dallas incoming salaries were dropped from 160k to 150k.
Okay, but that’s just the bad news and it only affects people about to start with the firm. For associates already at the firm, there was a lot of good news from the Friday meetings.
Details after the jump.
Associates at the firm report that the salary thaw is on at K&L Gates:
[Y]ou guys left out the highlight of the meeting–they UNFROZE our salaries effective March 1, 2010! They are unfreezing in all offices, across the board…. The reason it is effective march 1 is because this has always been the date on which salary increases are effective at K&L. I know it sounds strange, but that’s the way it has always been. That has always been the date that salaries go up, that’s when bonuses are paid, and that’s when partnership is effective for those voted into partnership in December…so nothing shady there …
We understand that it is only an unfreeze and not a true up as they are planning at Latham. But we also understand that K&L will be paying bonuses to people that hit 1950 hours.
And there’s one more, potentially great, thing. A tipster reports:
Kalis affirmatively said the firm “will not be conducting any layoffs.”
Let’s hope that no layoff promise includes no stealth layoffs.
Earlier: Christmas Salary Cuts at K&L Gates
Nationwide Layoff Watch: K&L Gates Reduces by 36 Associates
firrrst
Maybe Kalis isn’t such a bad guy after all. Christmas cheer to all the K&L-ers who haven’t been laid off or had his or her salary cut!!!
Not such a crappy firm after all. And 150K is a boatload of money in Dallas even if you have 6 figures in debt, so count your blessings…
MysTTTal
150k salary in Dallas = 265k in New York City
CHECK YOU COSTS OF LIVING, city rats!
HOW WILL THIS AFFECT STEVENS?
All Kalis’ promise means is that they are back to stealth layoffs. Keep patting yourself on the back you K&L hack.
7, STFU. How many firms have unfrozen salaries? Answer: not many. Get a life.
wtf is a true up vs. a thaw…dude…not everyone reads this blog 24/7…these are critical details that you are leaving up to assumption that the reader knows wtf nerd language you are talking about…
there are at least 5 possible scenarios when it comes to salaries
1. salaries are cut – e.g. a fifth year will go from making 185k to 170k during 2010
2. salaries are frozen again – e.g. a fifth year will remain nmaking 185k during 2010
3. the salary scale is frozen but there are advancements of salaries – e.g. a fifth year will go from making 185k to 210k during 2010
4. the salary scale is unfrozen -e.g. a fifth year will go from making 185k to 225k during 2010
5. the salary scale is unfrozen and associates are paid deferred comp – e.g. a fifth year will go from making 185k to 225k in 2010 and will get 20k in deferred comp
you need to make clear which of these are occurring and you need to LEAD with this…this is, by far, the most important knew…more important that what 1st years are making and more important than every lemming firm following the cravath scale
k&l gates is a stealth layoff king. good luck to those who missed hours.
Dallas has the best legal market in the country.
May be true. But you have to live in Dallas.
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I’m a new biglaw associate and I’d love to see an open post about blackberry policies. I currently own my device and get reimbursed for the bill (it’s not a company device), but have the BES plan for corporate email. I also have my gmail account set up on my blackberry. Does this mean the firm can read all of my personal emails to/from my gmail account because of the BES? What if they are sent from my computer, not from my blackberry?
Is it common to have personal email on one’s blackberry? If I take it off now, will they still have access to my emails because it was once linked? do they have free reign to read my personal emails or would they need cause?
I dont say anything bad on my personal email, but use a lot more leeway than I would with my work account.
For all the K&L Gates haters out there, I am at DLA Piper, and every time I see a firm unfreeze or “true up” it makes me even more determined to get the f— out of Dodge in the New Year. To all of those who think an unfreeze isn’t enough, it could be worse. You could be at a firm that froze, conducted two lay-offs, cut, then developed a new system that is essentially another cut for 11 months, and now tells us it is a chance for us to make more money.
Simply put, I am jealous of the K&L Gates folks who work at a real firm. It may not be the top of the heap, but at least the firm realized that it had to maintain its talent by unfreezing salaries.
lotta action…
Locke Lord owns Dallas.
K&LGates is a world class firm. I wish worked for them. Instead, I just buy my groceries at the K&G Superstore.
Never been to Dallas. Don’t intend to visit. Ever.
8: I love that K&L partners and administrators are monitoring and responding to statements of fact. Are you denying that K&L conducted stealth layoffs prior to the official layoffs and that the firm won’t be “ramping up its reviews” again? Layoffs by any other name are still layoffs.
Also, “STFU”? How old are you now, you hack?
Locke Lord is barely third tier in Dallas.
Where, 15? Where’s the action?
K&L Gates is on the rise.
Also, which of those Texas firms had Harriett Miers?
I humbly submit that associates should be paid by the hour. This would improve morale by providing some upside to the inevitable nights/weekends/holidays/birthdays that you find yourself once again trudging to the office to do your client’s bidding. At least you could think of it as earning some extra cash. As it is there is a severe pay disparity between the 1800 hour associate and the 2400 hour associate. I do not believe this would create an incentive problem in terms of associates dragging out their projects. Associates want to go home too at some point.
ATL, you need to check your facts BEFORE posting things. Yesterday’s post about K&L was incomplete and misleading, and predictably prompted hateful responses from the peanut gallery. I know its hard to wait in this “I need it now” media environment, but I don’t think you got ANYTHING right in yesterday’s post, and added negative editorial comments based on your inaccurate information. I can’t imagine that post is a highlight in your career, year, week or day, or that you don’t aspire to do better. Your readers and the law firms in which they work, or want to work, sure deserve better.
19: Old enough to have taken your spot at K&L. Just b/c your layoff was stealth doesn’t mean it wasn’t deserved.
8/25, Nice try jackass. I left on my own accord for a better job. I can, of course, be angry on behalf of excellent lawyers who got a raw deal from your firm in the form of false reviews. It’s called empathy. Try having some for the people you and your ilk screwed.
K&L GaTTTes
Why does Dallas smell like manure and rotting carcasses?
UVA2L
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/nyregion/22nyc.html?em
NYC is a really crappy place. I grew up there. Check out the apartments that large firm associates buy in places like Houston. Open your eyes, fools.
Locke Lord and Winstead are the two best firms in Texas. They are all starting on time, and SAs got great deferment stipends.
Hey, 29. I don’t care how nice your apartment may be, you still have to live in that cesspool known as Houston.
I wish ATL put the good news at the front of the post so that it would spread Christmas cheer across the land!
The legal market is starting to thaw, even though it is snowing outside.
13, are you stupid?
I remember the good ole days…when a stealth layoff meant that you were fired because you sucked.
I will wait to see what happens in March. Newbies start next month and old associates are maybe 65% occupied in general and doing the work we used to give to legal assistants before we sacked them. Maybe 10 people in my office are as busy as they should be and no one is excessively busy (maybe in fits and starts, but not overall). I am shocked that we’re not overtly sacking people, so I am taking that as code for watch out for your annual review and expect a cut if you make it past that. Income partners are jumping before they are pushed and I don’t see how management can claim that associates who have none of their own work are safe.
What in the hell is Elie thinking? Why do other firms’ news of salary thaws get played out in big letters, and K&L’s headline reads, “SALARY CUTS” when the article is actually about K&L being good to its associates and unfreezing? Elie, are you honestly unable to dispense good news around the holidays? Oh yeah and one more thing: K&L didn’t do stealth layoffs. K&L fired people who sucked, and those sucky people called them “stealth layoffs” because they didn’t want to admit what crappy lawyers they are. Left more work for the rest of the good associates.
Biglaw is back.
I think this is a morale boost today, but like another poster said, its longer term effects remain to be seen. I fully expect that chronically under-utilized people will see pay-cuts, but hopefully those who are in high-flying practice groups that consistently bill far above expectations will see a reward. While I suspect that few or no associates will be rewarded in line or above what they would have gotten before the freeze, I suppose that even a modest raise is far better than a continued, across-the-board, freeze. The problem with the system as envisioned is that it will be virtually impossible for associates to really understand what the firm has done overall to associate compensation, given the lack of any policy, other than total discretion to the firm (and, presumably, a discrete – maybe non-existent – communication of the salary adjustment to the affected associate). I suspect that firm management’s real, internally-stated goal is to reduce overall associate compensation through this move, so I would not be surprised if people were disappointed come March.
36, if you’re an associate, you need to develop some empathy because there but for the grace of God go you. Also, develop a better vocabulary than “sucky.” Seriously.
If you’re a partner or administrator, you should be ashamed of yourself. Both because you are attempting to tarnish the reputations of those you fucked over and because you didn’t have the good sense to avoid using the word “sucky.”
That is all.
News to BIGLAW. All your jobs are going to India because their attorneys work for $9.00 per hour and that is what you are worth.
News to BIGLAW. All your jobs are going to India because their attorneys work for $9.00 per hour and that is what you are worth.