To balance out word of the robust O'Melveny bonuses, here's some bad news out of California. Earlier this week, Gunderson Dettmer (boy I miss "ad"venture capital) laid off a number of junior associates. As veterans of the heady dot-com days may recall, Gunderson put itself on the map back in 1999 by leading the charge to $125,000 starting salaries.

Gunderson did not respond to multiple requests for comment, made yesterday and today, so we don't have an official number of new people looking for work. But two sources claim that the firm laid off half of its first-year class (five out of ten associates) on Monday, plus an additional but unknown number of more senior attorneys. These layoffs are, according to a tipster, "on top of performance-related attrition / dismissals throughout the fall."

Some of those laid off this week were stub first-years, i.e., class of 2008 from law school. As Chris Rock might say, "here today, gone today."

More after the jump.

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.

If you graduated from law school before or during the tech boom of the late 1990's, you may recall how an elite boutique named Gunderson Dettmer led the charge on associate pay raises. As noted here:

In 1999, a Silicon Valley firm named Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian, shook the legal community by offering new associates a starting salary of $125,000 with a guaranteed bonus of $20,000. This represented a 25 percent increase in the average base salary and even more for the total compensation package. Other firms in major cities around the country were forced to follow Gunderson’s lead and annual salaries increased by about 30 percent between 1999 and 2000. New associates reaped the benefits.

The firm is considerably bigger today. And it didn't lead this latest round of pay raises; Orrick deserves credit for that.

But Gunderson Dettmer is definitely keeping up. Moreover, as a source at the firm notes, "Thankfully it appears that we didn't take the underhanded bonus-cutting route that Wilson Sonsini and Heller Ehrman did."

Check out the memo, after the jump.