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.

It’s been a tough day at Goodwin Procter. Multiple tipsters report that the firm is laying off both attorneys and staff today. One source reported on the human toll of losing your job:

[L]awyers were just laid off this morning at Goodwin Procter in Boston. There are both men and women crying in the halls.

It’s not clear what triggered the tears, since Goodwin handled the dismissals professionally, appropriately, and in a manner similar to other top firms. Are Goodwin guys just more sensitive?

Goodwin has laid off 21 attorneys and 34 staff. Here is the critical part from the firm-wide memo Goodwin Procter just sent out to its associates:

In anticipation of a slow economic recovery, we took a number of actions during the year to manage our staffing model, secretarial ratios and discretionary expenses. The end result was that while we were largely successful in realigning resources to meet client needs and market demand, there remains some overcapacity within the firm.

After careful deliberation, we have made the difficult decision to reduce our associate ranks by 21 people and our professional staff ranks by 34 people.

Most of the attorneys who were cut were second-year associates in the firm’s Business Law Department, out of its Boston office.

Read the full memo, after the jump.

As we finish off the Vault top 50, we look at some firms went through some tough layoffs.

Here’s the list:

41. Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe
42. Baker & McKenzie
43. Goodwin Procter
44. DLA Piper
45. King & Spalding
46. Jenner & Block
47. Dewey & LeBoeuf
48. Proskauer Rose
49. Vinson & Elkins
50. Irell & Manella

It might not look like it, but there is a lot of carnage on this list. Orrick is down four spots. Proskauer is down four spots. King & Spalding is down 3 spots.

And many of the firms here that are marginally up or holding steady still went through significant layoffs.

After the jump, Law Shucks offers some stats.

How young is too young to get married? Or more to the point, how young is too young to appear in the NYT weddings pages and not look foolhardy or vaguely scandalous? We ask because these newlyweds, ages 22 and 24, strike us as shockingly young. (And it’s definitely not a shotgun wedding — click on the link and you’ll see why.)

At any rate, this week’s featured newlyweds are all older than 22, so it’s a moot point. (If you want to ponder the trends in MAFM [median age at first marriage], here’s more.) Our finalists:

1. Caroline Nyenke and LaRue Robinson

2. Elianna Marziani and James Nuzum

3. Zehra Dincer and Matthew Mazur

Click on the link below for the scoop on these newlyweds.

With the Fourth of July falling on a Saturday this year, it pains us to contemplate all the tacky red-white-and-blue themed weddings that will be taking place tomorrow in VFW halls across this great nation. Please, people: A little bunting goes a long way. And it should never go on the bridesmaids.

But we’ll tackle the Independence Day weddings next week. Today, we’ve got the last batch of June weddings. Here are the finalists:

1. Heidi Lee and Steven Hwang

2. Ahsaki Benion and Richard Habersham II

3. Kristin Campbell and Robert Samuelson

Read more about these newlyweds, after the jump.

Readers have been clamoring for news about when incoming associates will be able to start at Goodwin Procter. If you thought that answer was going to involve “2009,” you just haven’t been paying attention. But perhaps readers hoped the start date would be sometime before the fall of 2010?

Tonight, Goodwin Procter decided that it was splitting up its incoming class of first year associates. Above the Law has obtained the memo announcing the news:

[W]e have been monitoring our capacity as a firm and watching the markets closely. While our overall business is stronger than many of our peer firms, the demand for legal services in many of our practice areas still remains flat to down as compared to last year. This poses a challenge for the firm in determining the best avenue for integrating our incoming class of 125 associates into the firm next year when there is simply not enough work to keep everyone busy in the near term.

We reviewed many options in determining how best to address this situation. Central to every option we considered was how to accommodate the greatest number of you at the firm. As a class, you are as talented a group as we have ever hired and we continue to be excited about your arrival at Goodwin. The option we concluded would best achieve our longer term goal of having the greatest number of you join us was to delay the start date of the first year class to next year and have half of you start in January 2010 and the other half start in October 2010.

Goodwin’s full plan is very similar to the plan announced by Ropes & Gray last month; it even includes a snazzy little name for the deferral program. Why it took Goodwin an extra month to figure this out is anyone’s guess.

Let’s get into the specifics after the jump.

In case you are wondering, this is going to be a bad day for associates and staff working in Biglaw. We’ve already seen big layoffs at Dechert and Bryan Cave. And we’re sitting on even more bad news (waiting on additional sources). But we just received official confirmation from Goodwin Procter that significant cuts are taking place today.

The firm is telling us that 74 people have been let go. Goodwin gave ATL this statement — which was also sent out to all Goodwin employees moments ago:

After careful deliberation, we have made the difficult decision to reduce our attorney and professional staff work force. We are reducing our associate ranks by 38 people and our staff ranks by 36 people, resulting in a reduction of approximately 4% in each group. The attorneys affected include associates and professional track attorneys and the staff affected include paralegals, secretaries and administrative staff.

People have been suggesting that Goodwin have been conducting stealth layoffs for months, but the firm has repeatedly denied those rumors.

Instead, Goodwin people maintained that the firm would openly announce layoffs, should they occur. Here, it would seem, is that announcement.

Check out Goodwin’s full statement after the jump.

AmLaw Daily continues to provide firm by firm profit numbers, and attorneys continue to be annoyed with firm rhetoric against the backdrop of actual layoffs.

The latest issue comes from associates formerly with Foley Hoag. Two weeks ago, we reported that Foley Hoag laid off 32 people, 17 associates and 15 staff. Yesterday, AmLaw reported that Foley’s profits per equity partner rose by 5%.

We’ve mentioned before that rising PPP in the face of layoffs and salary freezes is not necessarily a bad thing. If partners aren’t making money, partners will leave. If partners leave, banks start asking questions. If banks don’t receive satisfactory answers, everybody gets fired.

But just because people are capable of understanding the economics of the situation, it doesn’t mean that this is a time for partners to be patting themselves on the back.

The statements that annoyed some Foley people after the jump.

As we noted in yesterday’s Morning Docket, even the New York Times has taken note of the salary freeze trend at law firms. The Times reached out to Above The Law’s own David Lat for the story:

Although many associates are angry about the freezes, others are relieved, said David Lat, founding editor of AboveTheLaw.com, a blog about law firms and the profession.

“There is this sense that firms didn’t act prudently during the boom and now they are getting religion, and that it’s better late than never,” Mr. Lat said. “Many associates we have spoken to think the freeze probably saved jobs.”

At the beginning of the month, we did a round-up of firms that have frozen 2009 salary rates at 2008 levels. That list was 16 firms long. Since then, quite a few other firms have announced freezes. Due to frequent requests, we’re updating the round-up list since the number of firms with freezes (that we know of) has more than doubled, to 33 32. Check out the as-comprehensive-as-we-can-make-it list, after the jump.

Recently announced salary freezes include “solid ice freezes” at Blank Rome and Townsend and Townsend and Crew; and “Slurpee freezes” at Bingham McCutchen, Fish & Richardson, and Texan firm Andrews Kurth.

Memorandums, as well as a new list of all firms with “solid ice” and “Slurpee” freezes, after the jump.

Two big name rainmakers are leaving Morrison & Foerster for Goodwin Procter. According to a Goodwin Procter email:

Goodwin Procter announced today a major expansion of its Financial Services Group with the addition of two nationally-recognized attorneys, Robert M. Kurucza and Marco E. Adelfio. Kurucza joins as co-chair of the firm’s Financial Services Group. Both are resident in Washington, D.C. The addition of Kurucza and Adelfio will enable Goodwin Procter to provide a more fully integrated suite of services to prominent common clients, and to offer even greater cross-disciplinary expertise to a broad range of financial institutions.

Good news for Goodwin, but the announcement is just more unsettling information coming out of MoFo. Rumors of all sorts have been popping up about how things are going at MoFo. What we do know for sure is that Mofo hasn’t made a decision about associate salaries:

MoFo, [hasn’t] announced their bonus/ pay freeze intentions yet (which is totally bogus because it leaves associates in the dark). What little guidance we received came in the form of a wait and see what the market is doing approach.

Latham and Orrick have frozen, O’Melveny and Gibson Dunn are paying market. What will MoFo do?

Goodwin Procter just came out with their 2008 bonus news. Like other peer firms in Boston, Goodwin is going with a Cravath scale, though the firm does have a 1,850 hours requirement:

For 2008, we maintained our bonus eligibility threshold of 1,850 hours, though many of our peer firms set significantly higher thresholds for bonus eligibility this year. Attorneys who met the 1,850 threshold, which could be achieved through billable and pro bono work, were considered for bonuses, taking into account the factors noted above.

One very interesting note is that stub-first years will be receiving no bonus at all:

Target bonuses by class are listed below. Individual bonus awards may be above or below the targets based on the mix of relevant factors and will be prorated as appropriate for leaves. Because of their short tenure, attorneys in the class of 2008 who started in October were not included in the bonus program this year.

Onto the salary freeze after the jump.

The Baby Boomers (the generation that was dealt a resounding defeat last week) is also sometimes called the “Sandwich Generation.” Boomers like to claim that they are the first generation (in the history of “ever” apparently) to have to take care of both their parents and their children while they are still working.

Whiners.

Inter-generational aspersions aside, Goodwin Procter is actually doing something that should help Boomers out. They’ve instituted a very interesting new benefits package:

Free, round-the-clock access to a telephone support center that provides information on services for the elderly, the disabled, and the family members who care for them.

This is a program that could actually help attorneys. As anybody who has ever served as a part-time caretaker/full-time worker can attest to, getting the appropriate information is half the battle.

More details on Goodwin’s program after the jump.

In last Wednesday’s ATL / Lateral Link survey, we asked you whether you billed over Columbus Day Weekend this year.

We received 1,175 responses, and were pleasantly surprised to learn that 26% of you had a pleasant three-day weekend. Associates in Boston were most likely to enjoy a discovery-free Columbus Day, with offices at Bingham, Goodwin Procter, and Ropes & Gray reportedly closed for the day. Overall, 46% of Boston respondents reported that they had not worked over the holiday weekend, followed by 36% of respondents in Philadelphia.

Of course, not all respondents were so lucky. As one associate commented:

One of the name partners threw a hissy fit when someone asked for the time off, because “Columbus Day isn’t Christmas, and this weekend is just like every other weekend.” We were only absent one associate on Monday. Everyone else not a partner was working.

Nice.

Of those who spent time at the office, though, only 65% said that their office was actually open. Among worker bees whose offices were actually closed, 52% said that they simply had things they needed to get done. Another 21% said that a partner had told them to work over the weekend, while 8% said a client had asked them to finish something. 13% said they needed the hours.

But two percent of respondents who worked over Columbus Day weekend even though the office was closed said that they just “wanted to impress people,” which is just sad roughly consistent with prior holiday surveys.

Overall, about 58% of respondents who worked over Columbus Day weekend believed that the work was worth it.

—
Justin Bernold is a Director at Lateral Link, the sponsor of this Associate Life Survey.

We’re entering the second half of the Vault 100. This is part of a series of open threads to discuss the firms considered to be the profession’s most prestigious. Because we know you love prestige. And the opportunity for “TTT” accusations. [FN1]

Here’s the next bunch of firms, with prestige scores in parentheses:

51. Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP (5.851)
52. Dechert LLP (5.838)
53. Vinson & Elkins LLP (5.822)
54. Goodwin Procter LLP (5.815)
55. Jenner & Block LLP (5.778)
56. Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP (5.728)
57. Alston & Bird LLP (5.715)
58. Fish & Richardson P.C. (5.706)
59. Cooley Godward LLP (5.692)
60. Irell & Manella LLP (5.635)

Vault notes that attorneys at Pillsbury are treated to “freshly baked cookies.” But they also have to put up with being referred to as “Pillsburians” by Vault.

Compare, contrast, discuss… and if you’re at Pillsbury, have a chocolate chip cookie for us.

Earlier: Vault 100 Open Threads - 2009

[FN1] We periodically get e-mails asking for the definition of “TTT,” which appears so often in comment threads. As the uninitiated have surely gathered, it’s a derogatory term. Likely originating on AutoAdmit, it stands for “third tier toilet.” For more, see Urban Dictionary.

Law firm mergers have transformed the Biglaw landscape over the past decade. Several of the five firms in our latest open thread on Vault 100 firms have been involved in merger mania.

Here are the firms to talk about this morning:

56. Fish & Richardson P.C. (5.868)
57. Fulbright & Jaworski LLP (5.863)
58. Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP (5.825)
59. Goodwin Procter LLP (5.807)
60. Cooley Godward LLP (5.794)

Pillsbury Winthrop is the product of Pillsbury Madison & Sutro (San Francisco), Winthrop Stimson Putnam & Roberts (New York), and Shaw Pittman (Washington). Goodwin Procter swallowed up Shea & Gardner, just as Cooley gobbled up Kronish Lieb.

Please exchange information and opinion about these five 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

The House Judiciary Committee is taking a five-minute recess in the Monica Goodling testimony. We will resume our liveblogging of the hearing in a fresh post. Our two prior reports appear here and here.

Meanwhile, we can confirm the rumor from the comments that Goodwin Procter has raised associate base salaries to the $160K scale, in Boston, California, and Washington, DC.

The memo appears after the jump.

No, we haven’t heard anything on Latham & Watkins. But if you have, and you work there, please drop us a line.

It’s quite possible that nothing was accomplished at the LW committee meeting earlier today. That sometimes happens at law firm meetings, y’know.

After the jump, we pass along information about Goodwin Procter (New York). It’s rather old, and it has previously appeared in the comments.

But we don’t believe it has been on the main page yet. So here it is, for what it’s worth.

New Partners:

* Proskauer Rose: Fourteen new partners, three new senior counsel. Names here.

* Baker Botts: Eighteen (!) new partners. Names here.

* Wilson Sonsini: Thriteen new partners. Names here.

(Only two members of the class of 1998. How long is the WSGR partner track as a practical matter?)

At Risk:

* Some are speculating that William Haynes II, general counsel to the Department of Defense, will be replaced after CIA Director Robert Gates gets confirmed as Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s successor (as expected).

But with his Fourth Circuit nomination in limbo, where would Haynes go? The Legal Times suggests that he’ll end up with “a high-powered legal job at one of the nation’s top defense contractors,” which sounds likely to us.

Deceased:

* Anthony Lapham, counsel at Goodwin Procter and former general counsel to the CIA, at the age of 70, of a heart attack.

Proskauer Rose Promotes 17 Attorneys [Proskauer Rose LLP]
Baker Botts Announces New Partners for 2007 [Baker Botts LLP]
Firm Names 10 New NY Partners [NYLawyer.com]
Firm Raises 13 to Partnership [NYLawyer.com]
Will the Pentagon’s Top Lawyer Follow Rumsfeld Out the Door? [NYLawyer.com]
Law Blog Obituary: Goodwin Procter’s Anthony Lapham [WSJ Law Blog]
Anthony A. Lapham, 70, Former C.I.A. Lawyer, Dies [New York Times]

Lateral Moves:

* Litigator Robert Knuts, to Allen & Overy, from Day, Berry & Howard. Knuts was with the New York office of the SEC from 1994 to 2003.

As you may recall, London-based Allen & Overy is trying to build up its New York litigation practice — most recently through the addition of former plaintiffs’-side princess Pat Hynes.

* Private equity lawyer James Kelly, to Nixon Peabody, from O’Melveny & Myers.

New Partners:

* Goodwin Procter: corporate and private equity lawyer Edward Braum.

NY Partners Switching Firms [NYLawyer.com]
NY Lawyers On the Move [NYLawyer.com]