You can still call yourself prestigious if you work at the firms that make up today’s fall recruiting open thread. But once you are outside of the Vault top 20, people start talking about “firm culture” at least as much as they talk about prestige.
Here’s the next batch:
The slide continues for Shearman & Sterling. The firm was ranked #19 last year, and is down two spots this year. Is there any specific reason for the fall?
After the jump, let’s look at the firms rising up through the rankings.
Based on a Washington Post article profiling the Five O’Clock Club, an outplacement and career coaching company, we constructed a Biglaw blind item:
Which New York law firm, having already completed two rounds of layoffs, has hired the Five O’Clock Club to help it carry out additional layoffs (in August, October, and November)?
After we ran the item, several firms came forward to declare they’re not the firm in question. And now they’re joined by one more: Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.
A spokesperson for Morgan Lewis contacted ATL to say that it isn’t the firm with layoffs in the works. In fact, Morgan Lewis claims that it shouldn’t even be on the shortlist of contenders.
Read why — and check out the list of the Five O’Clock Club’s clients, including some very prestigious law firms that haven’t publicly admitted to layoffs — after the jump.
We reported last month that the head of U.S. litigation for Clifford Chance, Mark Kirsch, was leaving the firm’s New York office — and that layoffs in the litigation practice group were imminent. We didn’t know at the time where Kirsch was heading or how many of the 29 litigation associates in the Magic Circle firm’s New York office would be let go. Now we have more information.
Clifford Chance litigation partners Mark Kirsch and Mark Joel Cohen, and senior counsel Christopher Joralemon, have wound up at Gibson Dunn (which seems to be weathering the downturn better than many firms). Clifford Chance tells us the trio will be taking 7 of the firm’s 29 NY litigation associates with them. Kirsch is joining GDC as co-chair of litigation, as noted in Gibson’s press release.
Of the remaining 22 litigation associates, no more than 10 will be laid off this week, leaving a small litigation team in Clifford Chance’s New York office. As we mentioned before, the firm’s U.S. litigation will now be headed by Juan Morillo, who is in the D.C. office. In the words of one tipster:
Ed. note: The legal world is much bigger than New York, or Washington, or even the United States. Welcome to Letter from London, a weekly dispatch from the other side of the pond. Our U.K. correspondent, Isaac Smith, will expose ATL readers to the latest goings-on in the London legal world. You can reach Isaac by email, at isaacsmithlondon@googlemail.com.
The G20 summit, accompanied by its anti-capitalist sideshow, arrives in London this week – and UK Big Law is feeling a little scared.
Law firms are warning employees not to wear suits on Wednesday or Thursday so as to avoid being targeted in the violent protests planned around London’s financial district.
Which provokes an interesting question: how ghetto does a corporate lawyer need to dress in order to avoid arousing suspicion as to their true identity?
We’ll soon find out.
It all seems a bit unfair, really. It’s not as if lawyers got the super big bonuses. And now their salaries are actually falling. If those nasty anti-capitalists had bothered to have a quick scan of The Lawyer last Wednesday, they’d have seen that Shearman & Sterling’s London office had followed Freshfields in cutting newly qualified associate salaries by 8%.
Ed. note: The legal world is much bigger than New York, or Washington, or even the United States. Welcome to Letter from London, a weekly dispatch from the other side of the pond. Our U.K. correspondent, Isaac Smith, will expose ATL readers to the latest goings-on in the London legal world. You can reach Isaac by email, at isaacsmithlondon@googlemail.com.
On his recent trip to the US, Prime Minister Brown presented President Obama with an ornamental pen holder, carved from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet.
Maybe Obama was angry at the UK because London-based firm Clifford Chance laid off 35 business support staff from its New York and DC offices at the end of last year. But news of that only emerged last week — after Obama purchased the DVDs.
Perhaps Obama has a thing against the British. We do, after all, “sound gay and smell like Indian food” — as one poster on last Monday’s column observed. But your new president doesn’t seem the sort of chap to be burdened by petty prejudices — aside from, of course, his hatred of the disabled.
Or could it be that Obama is pissed off that he had to meet Brown instead of Tony Blair? Yeah, that makes sense. Americans f**king love Tony Blair.
Something you might not know about Tony Blair, after the jump.
AmLaw is out today with a carnage top ten. They list the firms that have conducted the deepest layoffs by percentage of total associates.
Orrick leads the way, its two rounds of layoffs (in November and on Tuesday) nailed nearly 20% of the firm’s associates.
But is Orrick’s position in the top spot a little unfair? There is every indication that Orrick tied every single one of its layoffs to the economic crisis. Many firms (most firms?) simple cannot say the same. Take a firm like Latham, which ranks fifth on AmLaw’s list, laying off just over ten percent of its associates last week. But the 190 attorneys cut last week doesn’t take into account the stealth layoffs we’ve discussed. The firm has still not directly denied these “stealth” moves to Above the Law, despite our numerous inquiries.
The whole performance based or “stealth” layoff question reminds me of the great debate going on in Major League Baseball over performance enhancing drugs. Everybody is a suspect because so few people will admit the obvious.
Last summer, we started an official Nationwide Start Date Watch as a few firms decided to trim costs by delaying the start dates for incoming associates. Why bring in new kids at $160,000 a pop when there’s no work to give them?
In 2008, Powell Goldstein, Thelen, Thacher, and Heller pushed their start dates back to January ’09 (though it was not enough to save the latter three firms); Seyfarth Shaw, K&L Gates, Shearman, and DLA Piper pushed their start dates back from September to October; Pillsbury pushed back to October, with bonus incentives offered to those who were willing to start even later; and Sonnenschein and WolfBlock asked associates to start in November.
This summer, firms may not have to “delay” start dates. Based on reports from a few 3Ls, it looks like late fall may be the new norm for start dates.
Start dates are in late October for new associates at Clifford Chance and Milbank Tweed, and November for new associates at Morrison & Foerster. (Though with Wednesday’s layoff news, MoFo-bound law grads are just happy to have start dates.)
Later start dates are good news for those who want to take nice, long bar trips, and bad news for those who want to start building their bank accounts as soon as possible. We’re wondering how widespread this trend is. If you’re a 3L with an offer letter in hand, please take this poll about when you’ll be officially entering Biglawdom.
The London-based “Magic Circle” firms may have had a strong presence on the 2008 global law firm rankings, but a few of them are off to a rough start in 2009. Earlier this month, we reported, “having already laid off 20 New York litigators, Clifford Chance today let go of 70 – 80 London lawyers.”
The layoff disease has spread to two other Magic Circle firms. Layoffs were announced in the New York office of Allen & Overy yesterday. Our sources says:
Allen & Overy just fired two paralegals and three attorneys in the NY office. These firings are said to be “performance based.” Word on the street is that there will be more, but they will come in bits and pieces to avoid bad press. Rumors have already started about other attorneys being let go in offices abroad.
[UPDATE (Jan. 26, 10:34 a.m.]: In response to our inquiry about layoffs, A&O spokesperson Jaime Bruck says, “This is nothing more than the normal management of our business. We don’t comment on the reasons for individual departures. The total # of attorneys in NY is 171.”]
And Linklaters plans layoffs soon. The Old World firm is going “New World” by axing 70 partners and 10 percent of its associates, reports The Lawyer:
Linklaters’ top management is to drastically overhaul the firm’s structure, slashing up to 70 partners and 10 per cent of associates in a bid to become a smaller, more profitable operation.
The programme, understood to be called Linklaters New World, will also see redundancies among support staff. The firm’s offices in Western Europe are thought to be most vulnerable to cuts.
Those layoffs could start as soon as February.
With the Guardian reporting that “Britain has officially entered recession for the first time since 1991,” the layoff news from London seems inevitable. But some of the firms in the circle– Freshfields and Slaughter & May– are still feeling magical. Good news from those firms, after the jump.
Twenty-seven-year-old hottie marries much older non-hottie: Normally a match like this would be explained by the groom’s (1) job at Goldman, (2) trust fund, or (3) peerage. But no, this groom is (drumroll) the associate dean for finance and administration at Yeshiva’s Cardozo School of Law. This is how bad the economy is, folks: Attractive women are marrying associate deans of non-T14 law schools.
We mentioned this massive layoff from across the pond in today’s Morning Docket, but it seems like we need to devote a full post discussing the shocking news.
Having already laid off 20 New York litigators, Clifford Chance today let go of 70 – 80 London lawyers. The Lawyer reports:
In a statement, London managing partner Jeremy Sandelson said: “We have not taken this decision lightly. However, like any other business, we have to respond to prevailing market conditions.
Our clients and their legal services needs have undergone significant change over the past year. We need to reflect that in the London office, and that includes ensuring that our level of staffing is appropriate for today’s economic realities.
By taking action now, we believe we will be well placed once conditions begin to improve.
Today’s information puts yesterday’s news about Clifford Chance asking for more capital from their partnership into a larger context. Yesterday, we said:
Associates: next time you complain about greedy partners slashing your pay, consider the possibility that they’re suffering too in this economy. They’re trying to safely navigate the recessionary shoals, just like the rest of us. Some of the measures they’ve been taking, like pay freezes and reduced bonuses, may just be prudent planning. Better to have a smaller paycheck than no paycheck at all.
Good luck to our U.K. friends suddenly receiving no paycheck at all.
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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You can still call yourself prestigious if you work at the firms that make up today’s fall recruiting open thread. But once you are outside of the Vault top 20, people start talking about “firm culture” at least as much as they talk about prestige.
