After making our way across the country, which included stops in New York, Washington, D.C., and California, the final leg of this Career Center series on the Top Partners to Work For will cover some of the smaller legal markets.
Today we head back to the east coast to focus on Boston’s best Biglaw partners who work at the following top firms: Foley Hoag, Proskauer Rose, Skadden, Mintz Levin, Cooley, Greenberg Traurig, and Ropes & Gray.
Let’s see which partners made the cut….
Today we wrap up coverage of the top California partners to work for, as selected by our readers (see Part 1 here).
These six partners have diverse practices that range from real estate, to labor and employment, to IP, and work at some of the nation’s finest firms: Cooley, DLA Piper, Sheppard Mullin, Jones Day, Bingham McCutchen, and Best Best & Krieger.
Let’s find out why associates are thrilled to be working for these partners….
Continue reading “Career Center Survey Results: Top Partners to Work For – California (Part 2)”
Today we take one last look at some of the finest Washington, D.C. partners to work for (if you missed Part 1, click here).
Not only are these six partners great at what they do, but perhaps more importantly, they are great people as well. And they work at some of the top law firms in the nation: Dewey & LeBoeuf, Cooley, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Crowell & Moring, and Bingham McCutchen.
Kudos to these partners for making Biglaw a little less brutal….
It’s hard to say which of these (non-lawyer) wedding write-ups is more cliché-ridden: the one about the two lesbian PE teachers, or the one about the peace activists who keep their income below a taxable level so they don’t give money to the Pentagon. The latter pair are way too busy rummaging through dumpsters to read the Internet, so we feel zero guilt about exposing them to ridicule in the comments. There’s certainly a lot of ridiculous material there.
But on to the lawyer weddings: still ridiculous, but in a different way. Your finalist couples:
Kathleen Cassidy and Ian Shapiro
Emily Feinstein and Eric Olney
This is a summer mega-LEWW, with five finalists and a loooooong list of also-rans at the end. Read on for a virtual nuptial feast….
Continue reading “Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Hero and Heroin”
Here in the great state of New York, marriage equality is the order of the day — as it is in five other states, plus D.C.. But due to the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal tax code does not recognize same-sex unions. As a result, as explained by the law firm of McCarter & English, “the Internal Revenue Code treats the value of employer-provided healthcare benefits for a civil union or domestic partner as ‘imputed income’ to the employee. This means that employees who elect domestic partner benefits must pay income tax on the value of those benefits, which is in direct contrast to employees with different-sex spouses.”
To address this inequality, a number of law firms — including McCarter & English, as of this June — have adopted what we here at Above the Law have dubbed the “gay gross-up.” This benefit consists of “a bump in income such that, post-tax, the employees are in the same position as similarly situated employees electing healthcare benefits for their opposite-sex spouses.”
In addition to McCarter, a number of prominent law firms have adopted this policy since our last report. Let’s find out which ones….
UPDATE (8/25/11): We’ve added to the list since it was originally published. See the updated list below.
Continue reading “Biglaw Perk Watch: The Gay Gross-Up Is All the Rage”
We recently reported on Wilson Sonsini restoring associate base salaries to pre-recession levels. Wilson Sonsini associates in five major offices — New York, Palo Alto, San Diego, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. — are now paid on what might be called the New York market scale or the $160K scale (a scale I’ve committed to memory: 160/170/185/210/230/265).
In our story, we quoted a WSGR associate who viewed the firm’s raise as a response to salary hikes by two Silicon Valley peer firms, Cooley and Gunderson Dettmer. At the time of our story, however, Cooley and Gunderson had not raised SV associate salaries to NYC market levels.
UPDATE: To be precise, Cooley had announced a raise at the time of the WSGR memo, but the raise had not yet taken effect. Gunderson did not announce until yesterday.
Let’s learn more….
Continue reading “Nationwide Pay Raise Watch: West Coast Action”
We’re doing our annual march through the Vault prestige rankings, to give ATL readers the opportunity to have their say about perks and pitfalls at these firms. If your firm actually let you swap your Blackberry for your iPhone, brag here. Or if your firm has such a strong stench that it makes you nauseous, vent here.
We’ve been doing open threads in batches of ten, but now we’re going to pick up the pace. Here are the Vault #41 – 60. This is when the prestige list gets a little more geographically diverse, with firms based in Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Palo Alto and even Pittsburgh:
41. Winston & Strawn
42. Baker Botts
43. Jenner & Block
44. Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft
45. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
46. Proskauer Rose
47 (tie). Dewey & LeBoeuf
47 (tie). King & Spalding
48. Goodwin Procter
49. Baker & McKenzie
50. Fulbright & Jaworski
51. Vinson & Elkins
52. McDermott Will & Emery
53. DLA Piper
54. Morgan Lewis & Bockius
55. Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman
56. Bingham McCutchen LLP
57. Dechert LLP
58. Cooley LLP
59. K&L Gates LLP
60. Alston & Bird LLP
We took a spin through their Vault rankings and awarded superlatives, after the jump.
Continue reading “Fall Recruiting Open Threads: Vault 41 – 60 (2011)”
Christopher Austin spent sixteen years at Ropes & Gray, the crème de la crème of Boston law firms. He was the co-head of the Technology Company and Venture Capital Practice group. So it was with some fanfare that Cooley Godward announced earlier this month that the Yale Law grad was leaving Ropes to join Cooley’s burgeoning Boston office.
The firm issued a press release, and the news made it into the “Human Capital: People on the Move” column of the Boston Business Journal, on February 3:
Cooley Godward Kronish LLP added Christopher Austin, previously the co-head of the technology company and venture capital practice at Ropes & Gray LLP, as partner. Austin will be a resident in Cooley’s Boston office.
So it was with some surprise that one of our readers saw his name mentioned again in the same paper and the same column, but with a different firm destination, on February 19:
Goodwin Procter LLP added a new corporate partner in the firm’s Boston office. Christopher Austin’s practice focuses on the representation of public and private technology and life sciences companies, venture capital funds and investment banks. Austin was previously co-head of the technology company and venture capital practice at Ropes & Gray LLP, where he practiced for 16 years.
La partner è mobile. Two weeks may be the record for shortest partnership ever. This truly does sound like musical chairs.
So what happened? Cooley issued a surprisingly spicy statement…
There’s good news at Cooley Godward Kronish. The firm was among the many that froze salaries last year. This month, Cooley announced it’s more of a hottie.
The good news is that the firm is taking salaries out of the freezer. The bad news is that the salaries have suffered some freezer burn.
The firm’s new base salary scale reflects some chipping away.
Continue reading “Cooley Godward Unfreezes
(But New Salaries Are Still Chilly)”
On Wednesday, we commended the firm of Paul Hastings for moving so quickly to support Haiti earthquake relief efforts. Since then, a number of other top law firms have pledged their support to this worthy cause.
(Okay, Rush Limbaugh questions the worthiness of the cause. But we suspect that Limbaugh’s position — like that of Pat Robertson, who blames the earthquake on Haiti’s supposed pact with the devil — is a minority view.)
The WSJ Law Blog and Am Law Daily have gathered information about what various law firms are doing to help Haiti. We’ve combined their reports with information we’ve received from our own sources, to create a more comprehensive list.
Check it out, after the jump.
Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks. Law Shucks has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.
For a while there it would look like the first consecutive weeks without layoffs since this time last year (by our reckoning, you have to go back to the weeks ending October 9 and October 2, 2008). Alas, one firm did come through with staff layoffs, about which more after the jump.
As usual, we begin with the US macroeconomic picture, and as usual, it ain’t pretty. For the week, the S&P 500 was down about 2%. That was the second straight week of losses, and the DJIA had its biggest weekly decline in three months. 263,000 net jobs were lost in September and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, despite perhaps the technical end of the recession. As with the stock market, bad results are one thing, but results worse than expectations are another, and that was the case here. Consensus estimates were net losses of 175,000, so the actual results were way short. August’s revised numbers were slightly better than original reports, though.
The poor results are creating pessimism around when things will start to turn around:
[T]he report also buttressed fears that economic expansion would be weak and hesitant, with scarce paychecks and economic anxiety remaining prominent features of American life well into next year.
“This is a weak report,” said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh. “The rate of job loss has tapered off, but we still haven’t reached the point where businesses are willing to hire.”
Could this create political difficulties for the president?
Last week, we told you that Wilson Sonsini froze staff salaries. Today, there is more pain being spread around the legal staffing world. The Recorder reports:
Fifty-eight staffers were cut Thursday, although no attorneys were let go, according to an all-hands memo from Cooley Chief Operating Officer Mark Pitchford.
“This reduction was conducted to eliminate pockets of staffing overcapacity throughout the firm,” wrote Pitchford.
Cooley laid off 62 staffers (and 52 attorneys) back in January. Last month, we reported on stealth layoffs that occurred at the firm throughout the summer.
Given the recent reductions in attorney workforce, it’s not that surprising that Cooley had an overcapacity of staff. But the math probably does not make it any easier for those that lost their jobs.
Good luck, former Cooley staffers.
Read the full firm memo after the jump.
Continue reading “Staff Layoff Watch: Cooley Cuts 58 Staffers”
Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks. Law Shucks has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.
We’ll actually be hitting a week and a half in this roundup, going back to August 1. As we’ve been saying for a while, September is not likely to be as tranquil as August was (3 layoffs, 126 people in total), and the layoffs have already started. Eleven days in, and twice as many firms have laid off almost twice as many people.
Let’s step back and start with the big picture.
The really bad news came just before the Labor Day weekend, as unemployment hit 9.7%, a 26-year high. If you really want to find a silver lining, the net job loss for August was less horrible than expected, coming in at 216,000 jobs lost for the month. The decrease in total unemployment in July is now just a blip on a 16 out of 17 month streak of worsening employment numbers. It’s not even like the improvement in July was a result of actual new jobs, either — it came from people becoming so disaffected that they stop looking for jobs entirely, which takes them off the rolls of the unemployed. Hurray for government math!
Coincidentally, BLS reported 100 jobs lost in the legal sector for the month, which is right in line with the tracker (although they’re measuring two entirely different things).
Overall, 6.9 million jobs have been lost since the beginning of 2008 — which, coincidentally, is also the beginning of the Law Shucks layoff tracker (we count from Cadwalader’s first round). Major firms account for just over 13,000 of those.
So what has been going on so far this month? After the jump, we analyze the looming surge.
As 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.
Continue reading “Fall Recruiting Open Thread: Vault 61 – 70 (2010)”
First the good news. Cooley Godward has hired three IP litigators away from White & Case. Cooley’s press release explains that the three new partners will bolster Cooley’s Palo Alto office:
Cooley Godward Kronish LLP announced today that Heidi Keefe, Mark Weinstein and Mark Lambert, previously partners with White & Case LLP, have joined the firm’s national IP litigation practice. The three partners will be resident in the Palo Alto office.
“We are delighted to welcome such an accomplished and respected team of litigators to Cooley’s IP litigation practice,” said Frank Pietrantonio, head of Cooley’s IP litigation practice. “Their experience in the technology and life science sectors complements Cooley’s established platform in these areas and will enhance our ability to meet the growing demands of our clients.”
The situation at White & Case has been well-documented. So the partner defections are not totally shocking.
For Cooley, it doesn’t look like the good partnership news translated into positive associate outcomes. Details after the jump.
Continue reading “Partners In, Associates Out At Cooley Godward”
* Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally found a job! He’s going to terrorize the students at Texas Tech. [Houston Chronicle]
* Dewey & LeBoeuf snags three top tech lawyers from Cooley Godward. The three dealmakers wanted to make a splash with their switch, giving the Times DealBook juicy quotes like, “[W]e’re M.&A. lawyers, and we know how to do due diligence. And we believe Dewey offered a great opportunity.” [New York Times]
* The cold, dead hand of Heller Ehrman may rise from the grave to serve papers to Covington & Burling. [The Recorder]
* Lindsay Lohan’s fake tanning spray may not be an original creation. [Courthouse News Service]
* The lawsuits are crashing in after last month’s D.C. Metro accident. [DCist]
* Sarah Palin’s personal lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, responds! [WSJ Washington Wire]
We reported earlier today that Cooley Godward laid off a number of attorneys and staff. The firm just sent out its official press release, and it turns out the cuts run even deeper than we previously reported.
According to the firm, 52 attorneys and 62 staff were let go today:
Given the continued slowdown we have experienced in pockets of the Firm over the last five months and the forecast for continuing global economic turmoil in 2009, the Executive and Management Committees concluded that a reduction is necessary at this time. At all levels throughout the Firm we strive to provide an opportunity for everyone to grow professionally and at an appropriate pace. It was the collective judgment of the Firm’s management that in the current environment we would compromise our ability to achieve that goal without reducing the Firm’s headcount across the board.
Our tipsters report that the San Diego office was particularly hard hit. In addition, a commenter said that New York took it on the chin as well.
Read the full Cooley release after the jump. Good luck to all those let go today.
Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of law firm layoffs
Continue reading “Update: Cooley’s Layoffs Were Worse Than We Thought”
When the ATL inbox is on fire, there is a lot of smoke somewhere out there in legal community.
Tipsters report that Cooley Godward has decided to make significant layoffs today. Tipsters that work at the firm place the numbers as high as 10 percent of associates and staff. That could put the overall number of layoffs into the fifties. The laid off employees will have to be out by the end of the week. They’re being given a 3 month severance package.
Cooley Godward spokespeople could not be reached for immediate comment.
But other tipsters report that attorneys were told that the layoffs were based on the economy, not anybody’s individual performance. The layoffs are also understood to affect all offices and some departments (like IP transactional) that one wouldn’t necessarily expect.
We will update you as more information comes to light.
The now confirms that there were layoffs today, more than we reported here. The firm says that 52 attorneys and 62 staff were let go. Check here for continuing coverage.
It’s been a dark week on ATL. Layoff news has been pouring in: 21 attorneys cut at Katten, up to 60 at Sonnenschein, and 20 at Clifford Chance.
To prevent you from jumping out your windows, we’re revisiting a Wall Street Journal article from earlier this month on the silver lining for law firms during the economic crisis.
Firms with relatively strong balance sheets are hiring lawyers from competitors that are hurting from the dropoff in mergers, debt offerings and other staples of the legal business. Leaders of these firms figure that being bigger and more geographically diverse will help them weather downturns in particular market sectors and capitalize on complex business opportunities that require a variety of specialties. In most cases, they’re even giving the new hires raises.
Did you hear that, despondent ones? Raises!
Many firms have been feasting on the remains of Heller Ehrman (R.I.P.). Heller partners and attorneys have been snatched up by Hogan & Hartson; Orrick; Sheppard Mullin; Arnold & Porter; Covington & Burling; Jones Day; and Cooley Godward Kronish. Other firms have been poaching partners from struggling Thelen.
Some firms are buying on the cheap, while others are giving new attention to more resilient practice groups:
K&L Gates LLP has acquired medium-size firms in Texas and North Carolina this year and hired 45 partners from other firms. “We have no debt — no long-term debt, no short-term debt — and therefore have a balance sheet that allows us to grow aggressively into a downturn,” says Peter Kalis, chairman of the 1,700-lawyer firm…
But many law firms believe that they have no choice but to expand specialties, such as restructuring, intellectual property, securities litigation and antitrust, that are generally believed to remain steady — or even pick up — during down cycles. Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP in New York laid off 131 lawyers — nearly 20% of its staff — earlier this year because of the implosion in the mortgage-backed securities market, a key practice area for the firm. But it has hired lawyers in other practice areas, including financial restructuring.
Chins up.
Some Law Firms Hire in Slump [Wall Street Journal]
As Heller is sliced and diced, many associates are out in the cold [National Law Journal]
Earlier: ATL Layoff Coverage
Fans of Sex and the City will recall the famous episode in which Carrie was dumped via post-it note. If law firm mergers are like relationships, here’s a tale that seems as classy as breaking up by post-it. [FN1]
The New York office of Gunderson Dettmer was all set to move, en masse, to Cooley Godward. The 30 or so Gunderson attorneys had new, Cooley-issued Blackberries and laptops, with new email accounts and software already set up. They were set to start this past Tuesday.
On the Friday before Labor Day, the main partner in Gunderson’s NYC office simply called to let the Cooley crew know the move was off. This was not taken well by Cooley, since this had been considered a done deal for some time. The Gunderson lead partner did not even bother to call the CEO of Cooley, but instead called a relatively junior partner to break the news.
“Cooley is really pissed,” according to our tipster, “but they are moving forward.” Just like a jilted lover, Cooley seems to take the view that doing well is the best revenge: “They happen to be about to open a new office in a strategic location in the U.S., with a big bang, and with double-digit numbers of lateral partners as part of the potential deal.”
There is a body of law that governs who keeps the engagement ring when a wedding is called off. Could it be applied by analogy to those Cooley-issued BlackBerries and laptops?
Gunderson did not respond to our requests for comment. We reached out to Cooley, which declined to comment through a spokesperson.
[FN1] We adore post-its, and we love those little colored flags even more; but they can’t be used for everything.
Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past five years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com
Happy Chinese New Year! We were extremely busy the past few months, including most of our US based team working from our Hong Kong offices during November and December.
As a follow up from our recent post, which listed our 62 US associate and counsel placements in Asia last year (vast majority in HK / China), please note that thus far in January ’12, we have already made seven US associate and counsel placements in Asia. This is an especially impressive number, considering the biglaw lateral hiring market in Asia is down right now (see state of the market brief overview below). These new placements are of new hires in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, who were interviewing with their new firm for a month or more and they are spread out among different practice areas, including project finance, litigation, fund formation, M&A and cap markets. We are close on four additional new associate placements, in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, that we expect to close soon. We do not discuss partner placements in these articles, but the pace of partner recruitment in Asia (a large part of our business) has continued.
Hedge Fund In-House Openings in Hong Kong
We are seeing a small run of new in-house openings in Hong Kong at hedge funds. We are currently filling three different in-house positions at three different hedge funds in Hong Kong, two of these searches we are handling on an exclusive basis. All three will most likely be filled by a US associate, with about 4 to 6 years of experience. Mandarin not required. Candidates from NYC and London will be considered, but at one of these funds the new hire will likely come from Hong Kong / China or Singapore (with HK being the strong preference).
Please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com if you are interested in these hedge fund openings. As you probably would expect, the competition for these spots will be fierce and the funds will be very selective when choosing which candidates to interview.
In 2009, a small group of Harvard Law School students noticed an absurd monopoly in the bar prep space, held by an unchallenged leader with a non-evolving product. In response, these students teamed up with Harvard Law alumni to launch BarMax on January 14, 2010.
The mission: democratize bar prep by embracing new technologies to provide the very best bar exam review courses at a fraction of the cost normally associated with these courses.
Since then, with the encouragement of thousands of students and an unwavering commitment to their success, BarMax has established itself as a comprehensive alternative to the stagnant, over-priced status quo.
As we continue to expand, we do not want to lose sight of the basic premises that led us to create BarMax in the first place. If you are a law student who believes that there is something fundamentally wrong with being forced to take out yet another loan to pay for a $4,000 bar exam prep course, you are not alone.
