Cahill Gordon & Reindel

Fall Recruiting Open Threads: Vault 61 – 80 (2011)

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With fall recruiting gearing up, and the lateral market warming up, we continue our annual series of open threads about the law firms featured in the Vault prestige rankings. These threads provide ATL readers with a forum to discuss the different firms and their various strengths and weaknesses.

The end of the Vault 100 is in sight. We’re covering the firms in batches of 20 now. Here are the firms ranked #61 to #80, which will provide today’s discussion fodder:

61. Greenberg Traurig, LLP
62. Holland & Knight LLP
63. Fish & Richardson P.C.
64. Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP
65. Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP
66. Foley & Lardner LLP
67. Perkins Coie LLP
68. Nixon Peabody LLP
69. Patton Boggs LLP
70. Kaye Scholer LLP
71. Hunton & Williams LLP
72. Reed Smith LLP
73. Steptoe & Johnson LLP
74. Chadbourne & Parke LLP
75. Howrey LLP
76. Bryan Cave LLP
77. Lovells (US) [now part of Hogan Lovells]
78. Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP
79. Crowell & Moring LLP
80. Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP

This is a very eclectic group, including a few New York-centric firms, some D.C.-dominated places, and a bunch of national and even international giants.

Let’s take a closer look at some of these shops….

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Associate Bonus Watch: Cahill Gordon Gives Out Mid-Year Bonuses

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Yes, you read that headline correctly. Out of nowhere, Cahill Gordon & Reindel has decided to give out a mid-year bonus. Not Cravath, not S&C, but Cahill Gordon. The same Cahill Gordon that is one of the few firms to have significant layoffs in 2010. This is the firm that could push the market towards mid-year bonuses?

Apparently so. A tipster reported the bonus scale to Above the Law. It’s not a huge amount of money, but it’s something….

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Quote of the Day: You Can’t Handle the Truth

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I’d rather not get into it. You’d fall off your chair.

– Leading First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, declining to discuss with the New York Times what he and Cahill Gordon are charging the ratings agency S.& P.

Nationwide Layoff Watch: Cahill Gordon Resolves To Lose Some Weight

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Cahill Gordon logo.jpgLast January, Cahill Gordon & Reindel started the year by cutting approximately 10% of its associates. Sources report that 2010 is off to a similar start.
Says one tipster:

[I]t’s about 20-25 people. Mostly younger associates but some more senior people as well. Standard 3 months severance….
[I]t’s being termed performance based, typical stuff related to year-end reviews, etc. But the subtext and what people are being told is that it’s largely about there being too many people.

We reached out to the firm for comment this morning, but have not yet heard back. One of our tipsters claims that this round of layoffs will make Cahill New York as white as freshly-fallen snow…

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Are Clerks Welcome Back at Cahill?

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Cahill Gordon logo.jpgIf you are a Biglaw associate and are lucky enough to score a federal clerkship, congratulations. It is a nice feather in your cap.
But in this job market, are you wise to actually accept your clerkship offer?
As many of you know, clerks have to formally resign from their firms while clerking. In the before times, in the long, long ago, this was no big deal. You resign, clerk for a year or two, and then get “re-hired” by your firm when you are ready to return to private practice.
As the legal recession took hold last year, some associates who received clerkship offers worried that their firms wouldn’t hire them back. But for the most part, people decided to take a clerkship instead of staying at the firm and risk getting laid off.
At Above the Law, we’ve heard a lot of talk about these clerks trying to come back to work now, only to find the door back into Biglaw closed.
At Cahill Gordon, we’re hearing that clerks were not re-hired despite promises to do so.
Details after the jump.

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 11.1: The Beard

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As expected, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner easily won our October Couple of the Month poll. You can read all about Ivanka’s newlywed bliss here, here, and here (she’s already “gadding about the city ringless.”)
Now we plummet back to earth to turn the LEWW spotlight on more ordinary folk. This week’s contestant-couples:

1. Lisa Klein and Blake Sparrow
2. Sarah Goodstine and Laurie Levin
3. Rachel Moston and Garrett Ross

Get the scoop on these newlyweds, after the jump.

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Fall Recruiting Open Thread: Vault 61 – 70 (2010)

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comparing.jpgAs we get back to the Vault rankings, we encounter more firms that have engaged in stealth layoffs. And a firm that conducts mass transit layoffs.
To refresh your memory, here’s the next group:

61. Cooley Godward
62. Pillsbury
63. Sonnenschein
64. Cahill
65. Holland & Knight
66. K&L Gates
67. Nixon Peabody
68. Foley & Lardner
69. Kaye Scholer
70. Steptoe & Johnson

The penalty for having a partner announce layoffs on a train was six spots according to Vault. There have been other Pillsbury cutbacks. But the Acela incident happened when associates had Vault surveys sitting on their desks.
After the jump, let’s take a look at some of the other firms in this group.

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Summer Offer Rate Open Thread: Are We Back to 100%?

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summer associate program offer rate no offer.jpgSummer programs at many firms are shorter this year than last year. That means the summer is over at a lot of places, and summer associates are starting to learn their fates.
So far, there is some surprising news. Summers are getting offers. Many people have reported that their firm has given full, 100% offers to 2009 summer associates. Summers at Sullivan & Cromwell and Davis Polk are just some of the people reporting good news:

Davis Polk & Wardwell and Sullivan & Cromwell have extended offers to all of their summer associates.

Update (12:35): Additional tipsters inform us that Davis Polk has only given 100% offers to the summers that have already left. That is about half of the summer associates. The rest of the SAs leave on Friday, so we’ll see.
We also have received word that Cravath is making 100% offers.
After the jump, let’s look at a few more firms that we believe are making full offers to this year’s summer associates.

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Floyd Abrams, Standard & Poor’s, and the First Amendment Defense of Rating Agencies

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Floyd Abrams Cahill Gordon Reindel.jpgCould the credit rating agencies who are now being sued for their alleged role in the financial meltdown have a valid First Amendment defense? Floyd Abrams, god of First Amendment law and longtime partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, thinks so.
Abrams is the subject of a lengthy, interesting article in Sunday’s New York Times, focused on his representation of Standard & Poor’s, the biggest of the rating agencies. From the NYT:

Dozens of investors have filed lawsuits seeking redress from the rating agencies, contending that the companies bear responsibility for investors’ losses, under a Whitman’s sampler of theories. The recession, in other words, is about to begin its litigation phase, and Mr. Abrams and a handful of partners at the law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel are readying defenses for more than 30 suits filed against S.& P. Up first, an oral argument on a motion to dismiss one case is set for July 31….

Mr. Abrams will contend that S.& P.’s ratings deserve exactly the sort of free-speech protections afforded to journalists, on the theory that a bond rating is like an editorial — an opinion based on an educated guess about the future. And for the same reason you can’t sue editorial writers, Mr. Abrams will argue that you can’t sue a bond rater because the economy went into a free fall that few saw coming.

Is this a valid comparison? Is trying to sue a ratings agency like trying to sue a newspaper editorial board? Or the weatherman?
Read more, and debate the issue, after the jump.

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Nationwide Layoff Watch: Cahill Gordon, Round 2

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Cahill Gordon logo.jpgThings could be better over at Cahill Gordon. In May, the American Lawyer noted Cahill’s fall from the Am Law 100, the nation’s 100 largest law firms by revenue. Until its recent tumble, Cahill had been on the list for 24 consecutive years.
Back in January, we reported that Cahill Gordon laid off approximately 10 percent of its associates. At the time, we mentioned that first- and second-year associates were spared from the winter cuts.
Well, it appears that the wheel has come around. Multiple independent sources report that Cahill laid off a number of associates last week. Our sources report that junior attorneys were the focus of this round of cuts:

It seems without warning many 2nd years were let go [last Wednesday].

Another tipster reports:

Second years out the door [last week]. I guess the January reprieve was just temporary.

At least second years received some extra pay. The firm did not respond to our request for comment, but we understand that laid-off associates did get a severance package.
And the sacrifice of Cahill second years could preserve the salaries for all of the remaining Cahill associates. More details, plus a reader poll, after the jump.

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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 1.25: Plane-Spoken

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Some of our friendly commenters frequently gripe about the high number of Rabbi-officiated weddings featured in this space. They’ll be delighted to know that only one of our three weddings this week is a straight-up Rabbi wedding. The others were jointly officiated by a Rabbi and a Mennonite minister and a Rabbi and a bankruptcy judge. Yay for diversity!

Here are this week’s lucky finalists:

1. Harper Fertig and James Robinson

2. Marion Ringel and Joshua Panas

3. Julie Hootkin and Benjamin Schneider

Read all about these couples, after the jump.

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Nationwide Layoff Watch: Cahill Gordon

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Cahill Gordon logo.jpgWe are now ready to confirm some of the reports flying around the internet about layoffs at Cahill Gordon. We now have multiple tipsters who work at Cahill who can confirm that there were significant layoffs at the firm last Thursday.

Our tipsters don’t know the numbers of cuts — and the firm has rebuffed our repeated requests for comment on the story — but some tipsters report that as many as ten percent of associates were let go.

The timing of last week’s cuts seemed to rankle some of our sources. On Wednesday, Cahill announced Half-Skadden bonuses. But on Thursday associates were called in for their “annual review” and told that they were being let go … and that they would not be receiving the 2008 bonuses the firm announced the day before.

As we understand it, first and second years were spared. But everybody else was fair game.

Working all of 2008 and still not getting a 2008 bonus has to sting. But the firm did give a 3 month severance package.

Still, the firm apparently doesn’t want to talk very much about their decision to fire people without giving them their bonuses. Tipsters weigh in after the jump.

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