Earlier this month, we reported on layoffs at Foley & Lardner. Foley later confirmed the news.

Maybe Foley is just clearing out room so it can bring on its class of incoming associates? Right. Maybe if I had wheels I’d be a wagon? Foley has already deferred its incoming associates until February 2010. Now it is deferring associates again. Tipsters report:

I know every office has been talked to about the *possibility* of changing start dates. … [In Chicago] it’s complicated:

* all incoming IP associates are deferred until September, 2010, with a $5K/month stipend (no health care) beginning February 1;
* half the litigation associates will start in February as planned; the other half will actually start *earlier*, this December;
* the incoming transactional associates haven’t been told anything yet. My guess is they’ll be summarily shot.

The firm has not responded to our multiple requests for comment.

Incoming associates are asking firms to let them know when they will be starting. But does it really matter? Are there opportunities that incoming associates are really passing up this fall because they plan on starting this after the first of the year? Let us know in the comments.

Earlier: Nationwide Layoff Watch: Foley & Lardner Lays Off 39

We’re getting multiple reports that Foley & Lardner is laying off 39 people today. Our sources report that associates are being told right now. If you work at Foley, I hope your phone is not ringing.

One tipster tells us that the IP group could be the hardest hit:

Foley announced associate/senior counsel/etc. layoffs today. Exact number not entirely clear, but about 39 folks are supposedly being informed today. There were others informed earlier that could take the total up to 50+. Not sure which offices, etc. Rumor has it that Foley’s IP group is especially vulnerable — very little work in that group.

I guess cutting the soda subsidy wasn’t enough of a cost savings.

Spokespeople at Foley & Lardner did not respond to an immediate request for comment. We’ll keep you posted as more news develops.

UPDATE: In other Foley news, the ABA Journal reports that the firm is claiming it’s the victim of vexatious litigation filed by a patent holding company. See also The BLT.

Earlier: Reversed Perk Watch: Soda Subsidy Slashed at Foley & Lardner

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.

* A disappointing ruling from the 3rd Circuit for sports gamblers in Delaware. [USA Today]

* L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich wants to make hanging out illegal. [Los Angeles Times]

* Judge Jed Rakoff is becoming a media darling. Another article singing the BofA-bench-slapping judge’s praises. [New York Times]

* Foley & Lardner sued for allegedly revealing trade secrets. [National Law Journal]

* Connecticut prosecutor John H. Durham has been chosen to lead the Justice Department’s investigation into CIA torture of detainees. [Talking Points Memo]

* Four more years for Bernanke. [Washington Post]

First they came for the Kleenex. Then they came for the coffee.

All around the country, law firms large and small are cutting costs by revoking perks. Today we heard from an unhappy camper — perhaps deprived of their customary caffeine? — at Foley & Lardner:

I can handle them taking away the Christmas party and giving us a 10% pay cut. But ratcheting up the cost of my soda by 150% is where I draw the line!

From an internal memo that went around this morning:

Vending machine prices - It has been several years since we last changed the price of beverages in the vending machines, yet our costs have increased steadily over those years. In order to bring the prices we charge in line with current costs, the price for soda and water will increase to $.75 and the price for juice will increase to $1.00. The new prices are still well below those found in public vending machines or stores, but will reduce or eliminate the need for the office to subsidize these items.

Frankly, we’re a bit puzzled. Isn’t it in Foley’s business interest to have well-caffeinated associates? Could the associates deprived of discounted Dr. Pepper have a Good Samaritan claim — oh, never mind….

The full memo — apparently there’s no such thing as a free lunch, at least at Foley & Lardner — after the jump.

While firms seem to be focused on dealing with their summer associates and future summer associates over the past couple of weeks, there are still regular full time associates working at Biglaw firms. They’re not extinct. And they still get paid. It’s just that they are getting paid less.

Foley & Lardner has become the latest firm to cut associate salaries. Multiple independent sources report that the firm as instituted a 10% pay cut for all associates in all offices.

The firm declined to respond to our multiple requests for comment.

But the move is not totally surprising. The firm is ranked #67 on last year’s Vault rankings. Many firms at that general level have cut salaries. And if you look at #66 on that list, you’ll see it’s Heller Ehrman. And we know how things worked out there.

So take heart, Foley friends. Things could be a lot worse.

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of salary cuts

Many law school graduates are preparing for an endless summer. Endless in that they won’t be starting work until well into the winter. At this point, the majority of firms are starting 2009 graduates in January 2010. There are some outliers though — some firms are starting new associates as early as September 2009, and some are offering them start dates as late as January 2011.

Here are a few of the latest additions to the deferred start dates list from the past week:

Full disclosure: we do not know exactly what is going on over at Foley & Lardner. But we are hearing a lot of chatter.

By way of a quick summary: we posted information that Foley offered only 43% of their summers out the Chicago office. Then Foley issued a firm wide email saying that they offered 81% of their Chicago summers (we posted that too). Meanwhile, the firm has rebuffed multiple attempts to verify any of this information directly. For more details read here and here.

After we updated Foley’s hiring numbers and posted Foley’s CEO Ralf Boer’s statements, our tipsters wagged their fingers and said “oh no he didn’t.” This email is indicative of many comments we received:

Just FYI—Ralf Boer’s email is a load of crap.

Hmmm …

Many believe that Foley did in fact tell summers that they would not be receiving an offer, but then reversed course early this week, after our initial post on Foley’s no offers went up. The thought from these tipsters is that the public backlash was so bad that Foley had to rethink their hiring decisions. Initially we found it hard to believe that a firm would have the gall to no offer somebody, only to call them up weeks later with an offer. But the tips kept rolling in.

We are happy (rolling around like a pig in sweet, sweet slop, happy) to think that ATL had some small role to play in securing additional summer associate jobs in this economy. But there are two sides to every story. Some tipsters think that Foley’s delay in completing the offer process is par for the course:

I just want to say that I know first hand that .. many people had not yet heard either way about offers. That is for both 1Ls and 2Ls. … I think you should update your main posting for the sake of all the comments calling b.s. on Ralf Boer’s statement that they only just finished making all the decisions. … I know for a fact first-hand that several people had yet to hear as of yesterday and even today. On an historical note, right about now is exactly how long it took Foley to get back to many folks last year.

So did Foley ding people and then change their mind, or did they just take a long time to finish their hiring process? More tipsters weigh in after the jump.

Last week, we reported that Foley & Lardner no offered 43% of their 2008 summer class from their Chicago office.

The firm has still not contacted us directly, but multiple tipsters passed along a clarification email sent to all Foley associates late last night.

Straight from the horse’s mouth (CEO Ralf Boer):

Many of you may have heard about blog comments critical of Foley’s hiring decisions from this year’s summer program which just concluded. Some of those comments indicate that we have extended offers to fewer than 50% of this summer’s 2L participants. The purpose of this e-mail is to set the record straight so that all of you have the facts, rather than the rumors which started as we made our first offers and before we completed our offer process.We literally have only completed our offer process at the office level today, and additional offers may yet be made.

As we pointed out in our initial story, some tipsters mentioned that Foley could still have been reviewing summer candidates as of last week. We couldn’t confirm those reports with the firm, but they appear to have been correct.

So what are the final numbers shaping up like?

If we look at the number of offers made to date, the offer percentage is 84% (89 offers to the 106 2Ls in the summer program). That number may go up as we complete our offer process. Thus, the percentages reported in the blogs were calculated as we were in the middle of our offer process and, accordingly, were inaccurate. Some of the blog reports related to our Chicago offer rate. We have, in fact, to date made 17 offers to a 2L class of 21, for an offer rate of 81% in Chicago, not the 50% reported on the blogs. Again, that percentage may also go up.

84% overall, 81% out of Chicago. That is a bit lower than the 90% many firms are reporting, but far better than the bloodbath it looked like last week.

More on Foley after the jump.

Foley & Lardner. You’ve heard the rumors. We’ve heard the rumors. Foley & Lardner have heard the rumors and chosen not to respond. But the smoke screen cannot obscure the summer structure fire.

Multiple tipsters coalesced around these numbers: 9 of 21 Foley Chicago summers received offers. But six of those offers went to IP attorneys, leaving non-IP summers with a stunning 3 of 15 success rate.

I’m no mathlete, but that doesn’t look like the 90% offer rate like we’ve been hearing from other firms.

And as we’ve seen with other firms, going to a top school was no summer offer safety net. Again, thus far the firm isn’t talking so we can’t know for sure, but it appears that HYS summers went 0 for 4 at Foley Chicago.

Read what people are saying below the fold.

Judging from our traffic, readers are enjoying this rundown of the Vault 100. We do aim to please here at ATL. We appreciate those who have offered insights about firms in the comments.

Moving on to the next group (with prestige scores in parentheses):

61. Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP (5.608)
62. Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP (5.583)
63. Bingham McCutchen LLP (5.583)
64. Greenberg Traurig, LLP (5.478)
65. Holland & Knight LLP (5.416)
66. Heller Ehrman LLP (5.346)
67. Foley & Lardner LLP (5.266)
68. Steptoe & Johnson LLP (5.252)
69. K&L Gates LLP (5.242)
70. Kaye Scholer LLP (5.230)

As we move down the Vault list, “notable perks” are becoming less elaborate. This group is dominated by tales of free food, from endless soda at Greenberg Traurig to weekend doughnuts and muffins at Foley. And it appears that Pillsbury lacks a monopoly on cookie benefits; over at Cahill, lawyers are plied with “twice daily cookie trays.”

We note this food-related perk at Bingham: “If any lawyer takes out a more junior lawyer for drinks/dinner, he/she can submit the expense to the mentoring budget AND the senior person can get creditable hours.” Can you expense the roofies?

We invite you to compare and contrast these firms’ work, lifestyle, benefits… and cookies, in the comments.

Earlier: Vault 100 Open Threads - 2009

Lately it seems there’s been a lot of law-firm merger activity. The statistics bear this out, although there’s disagreement as to degree. From a piece by Leigh Jones in the National Law Journal:

Law firms didn’t slow down their march to the altar in the second quarter of 2008, but just how many mergers occurred depends on whom you ask. Altman Weil announced a sharp increase in merger activity during the second quarter. It pegged law firm mergers at 26, compared with 18 in the first quarter.

At the same time, competitor Hildebrandt International announced steady merger activity, with a total of 14, compared with 12 mergers in the first quarter of 2008.

There has also been a steady increase in rumors about law firm mergers. Some of them will turn out to be true, some not. The fact that some gossip won’t pan out doesn’t make it any less interesting. Lawyers need some way to pass the time, and speculating about their competitors — or themselves — is as good a way as any.

Here’s an excerpt from a recent profile of our media idol, former Us Weekly and Star editrix Bonnie Fuller, from the New York Times:

Ms. Fuller knows the dyad of funny / hurtful, having run cover articles about people getting divorced, pregnant and tossed into rehab. Sometimes those stories were true.

“There have been a lot of false pregnancies and laugh-out-loud groaners,” says Simon Dumenco, a longtime analyst of the magazine industry who writes a column for Advertising Age. “What she has done is gotten at a kind of essential truth that is less about the specifics of the gossip. This endless speculation and estimation about the lives of these people has become the stuff of culture.”

In that last sentence, replace “these people” with “these law firms,” and that’s ATL for you. A lot of what we write in these pages may turn out to be inaccurate, but we’re getting at “a kind of essential truth that is less about the specifics of the gossip.”

So, with that caveat in mind, are you interested in hearing the latest law-firm merger gossip? Read more — about rumored deals involving Baker & McKenzie, Heller Ehrman, Nixon Peabody, Pillsbury Winthrop, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, and Harris & Moure (who?) — after the jump.

This latest bit of associate pay raise news is not particularly new. It was conveyed last week, via hard copy letter (in envelopes marked “professional and confidential”).

But we never met a pay raise announcement we didn’t like, so we’ll pass it along. Foley & Lardner — which, by the way, recently announced its new partnership class — has raised the salaries of its non-IP associates in the Milwaukee, Miami, and Detroit offices.

Numbers and tables, after the jump.

Yesterday we posted an open thread on law firms that screw over no-offer lots of their summer associates. This post is about the flip-side: firms that dole out summer associate bonuses.

This topic has been raised by two tipsters, in two different contexts. First, this tipster reports on two firms that pay bonuses to summer associates, regardless of whether you previously summered with them:

I’m just starting to get offers, as callbacks are rolling along. I have offers from Baker Botts and Fulbright & Jaworski, both in Dallas — and both are offering a week’s pay ($3077 and $2700, respectively) as a bonus! Baker pays out on the start date, and Fulbright pays if you spend the first half with them.

And from a second source, news of bonuses paid to 1L summers who return to the same firm:

I received an offer to come back for a second summer at Foley & Lardner… with a catch: If I come back for the whole summer, and do not split or spend time anywhere else, I receive a $5,000 bonus. The bonus pays out when I accept this fall, not next summer. I have no idea if all the offices do this, but I should add that I am not at all in a major market.

Interesting. Are you aware of other firms that either (1) pay bonuses to summer associates or (2) pay bonuses to 1L summer associates who return for a second summer (and don’t split)? Please discuss, in the comments. Thanks.

Earlier: Fall Recruiting Open Thread: No-Offer Factories

A tipster sent us this article, with a special request for our ongoing series on law firm perks:

“How about a story on REAL perks? It’s football season, and Foley & Lardner has a suite at Camp Randall, home of the No. 5 Wisconsin Badgers.”

“Can we compare the perks at The Garden, Fenway, Yankee Stadium?”

You can get tickets to sporting events from your friends at the printers. Or you can pay for them out of your ample salary (if you’re in Biglaw).

But what firms, in addition to Foley & Lardner, have suites at stadiums, or season tickets to top sports teams? And if your firm does have these perks, how can you avail yourself of them?

Please discuss this subject in the comments. Thanks.

UW football: Suite seats for charity [Wisconsin State Journal]

Our open threads on Vault 100 law firms seem to be drawing fewer comments. But we’ll finish what we’ve started. We don’t want to give you a case of these.

So here is this afternoon’s set of Biglaw shops (with Vault prestige scores in parentheses):

66. Greenberg Traurig, LLP (5.631)
67. Kaye Scholer LLP (5.591)
68. Holland & Knight LLP (5.498)
69. Steptoe & Johnson LLP (5.403)
70. Foley & Lardner LLP (5.360)

Among these firms, the special ATL shout-out goes to Greenberg Traurig. GT is the firm that incites the strongest passions in people.

Please discuss these five fine firms in the comments. Thanks.

The Vault Top 100 Law Firms [Vault]

Earlier: Vault 1-5; Vault 6-10; Vault 11-15; Vault 16-20; Vault 21-25; Vault 26-30; Vault 31-35; Vault 36-40; Vault 41-45; Vault 46-50; Vault 51-55; Vault 56-60; Vault 61-65