To paraphrase Austin Powers, Heller Ehrman is getting to "town bicycle" status. The latest firm to take a ride through Heller's financials: Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw.

According to Am Law Daily, citing sources close to both Heller and Mayer Brown, Heller is "aggressively" pursuing other merger options, with Mayer Brown looking like the most promising match. They add:

The current talks between Mayer Brown and Heller, which began days after Heller's talks with Baker & McKenzie ended, actually represent a second effort to combine the firms.

Before anybody starts requesting new business cards, it must be noted that Heller merger rumors tend to be as bankable as that Nigerian guy who needs your account number. In the past few months, Heller has been linked to Winston & Strawn, Proskauer Rose, and Baker & McKenzie. Given that a Heller/Mayer Brown merger has fallen through before, this latest rumor could be more about smoke screen than actual fire.

Just last week, Heller announced that it was postponing start dates until after Martin Luther King Day. We'll keep you updated on Heller's continuing efforts to be saved.

Heller Ehrman, Mayer Brown In Merger Talks [Am Law Daily]

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

We recently heard the following about Heller Ehrman:

1. Start dates for incoming associates have been pushed back to January 19, 2009. Associates are being offered a $10,000 stipend.

2. The firm has pulled out of on-campus interviewing (OCI) at several law schools, including UVA and UC-Davis.

We contacted the firm for comment. Spokesman Patrick Bustamante informed us that Heller has delayed the start date for fall associates to Tuesday, January 20, 2009 (because Monday the 19th is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day). These associates will receive a monthly stipend between November and January.

He also confirmed that the firm has withdrawn from OCI at some schools:

It's not unusual for firms to change or cancel their on-campus interview plans as they refine their hiring goals in late summer. [Ed. note: "Guys in my high school..."]

Because we plan to hire fewer summer associates next summer, we did cancel our plans to interview at some schools and to focus on schools where we have been the most successful in the past.

A little bit more, after the jump.

In the immortal words of Roxette, "It must have been love; but it's over now." Last month, we marveled at all the law firm merger rumors making the rounds. These days, however, merger talks are falling apart, left and right.

As we first reported, the contemplated merger between Heller Ehrman and Baker & McKenzie is officially dead. For the skinny on their breakup, see Legal Pad. Apparently client conflicts were the deal breaker (as they so often are; they're the law-firm equivalent of serious religious differences, or really bad STDs). Baker & McKenzie will have to settle for being a firm with a measly $2.2 billion in annual global revenue.

And now this, from the National Law Journal:

In the days that followed the joint announcement by Wolf Block and Akerman Senterfitt that their merger talks hit a snag over a conflict, sources have pointed to deeper issues affecting the drawn-out discussions...

One source aware of the merger discussions said the combination would be a good thing for both firms but said Wolf Block leadership is unwilling to work out certain tax and pension concerns.

There is concern among some of Wolf Block's partnership over having to pay a significant amount in taxes upon merging with a corporation, the source said. There is also concern over having to make up for Wolf Block's unfunded pension liabilities. Both of the issues could cause partners to "take a real financial hit," the source said, adding that a loan could solve those problems, but firm leadership seems unwilling to go that route.

We'd end with the requisite punchy quip, but unfunded pension liabilities leave us uninspired.

(It's a Friday, in August, after 3 PM. Why are you still here?)

Trouble with WolfBlock-Akerman merger talks over more than conflicts [National Law Journal]
Conflicts Blamed for Failed Heller Merger Talks [Legal Pad]
Bakers breaks £1bn mark with 20% revenue boost [Legal Week via ABA Journal]

Earlier: Heller Ehrman Is NOT Merging With Baker & McKenzie
Law Firm Merger Mania: Collected Rumors and News

Last week, Legal Pad offered this update on the merger talks between Heller Ehrman and Baker & McKenzie (the subject of intense speculation, in these pages and elsewhere):

A few weeks ago, partners from both firms met for dinner in the city.

A deal still seems possible, although it probably would require Heller to make some big concessions. (Several people we trust have increasingly said they wouldn't be surprised if Heller is forced to de-equitize a lot of partners, and reluctance to do so may be slowing the talks down.)

Perhaps these concerns were dealbreakers. A knowledgeable tipster tells us that the Heller / Baker merger is officially off. A voice-mail went out to all Heller shareholders about two hours ago.

So what's next for Heller? It seems that they're still losing lawyers. Will they find a new partner to take to the altar, just as Dewey Ballantine rebounded with LeBoeuf Lamb, after being spurned by Orrick? Time will tell.

Inquiring Minds Ask: What's Up With Heller? [Legal Pad]
Another Lawyer Leaves Heller [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]

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.

We thought that Monday was going to be the big day for announcement of a merger between Heller Ehrman and Baker & McKenzie. But Monday passed without any word. So did Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Does delay mean no deal? Not necessarily. The parties' mating ritual continues, according to Legal Pad:

Heller Ehrman partners received some promotional materials about Baker & McKenzie.... Apparently, there was little to it -- we hear it was mostly information that could be found on Baker's Web site -- and the word "merger" didn't accompany the packet....

We've heard about the mystery packet too. From an ATL tipster:

I did see the packet that my boss got--about a 2" thick bound book of promotional materials about Baker & McKenzie, along with an NDA (which means I'm not sure I'll be getting much more info on it). The shareholders then had a conference call [earlier in the week] about the merger talks.

So I guess there was kind of an announcement.... just not to the associates or public. The waiting game continues.

Indeed. We may lay off this story for a bit, despite the apparent keen interest in it, because it's like waiting for Angelina to pop out her twins. It will happen when it happens.

And an announcement, while perhaps imminent, is not that imminent. Legal Pad says to expect an announcement "within the next two weeks."

Now, back to more productive pursuits. To the extent that anything we do around here is "productive."

Update (8/11/08): It seems that these merger talks have died.

Heller Partners Bone Up on Baker [Legal Pad / Cal Law]

We have a draft post saved with the title "Breaking: Heller Ehrman Merging With Baker & McKenzie." It's ready to go at a moment's notice.

We thought we'd get to use it today. Last week there was overwhelming speculation about a Heller/Baker combination. Then, this morning, a Heller tipster told us:

[T]here's supposed to be some sort of merger announcement today. Word on the street is that the merger's with Baker & McKenzie (which you already appear to know), and that the shareholders have already gotten some sort of packet of info on the deal. Still no word, however, on what this will actually mean for all of us associates who are keeping an eye on the job ads just in case...

That's smart. And if you're looking for help with your job search -- to learn why you're better off using a recruiter than trying to go it alone, see our recent roundtable -- we encourage you to work with one of the many fine search firms that advertise on ATL.

We reached out to both Heller and Baker for comment. Heller didn't respond; Baker issued this statement:

Like all leading law firms, we are continuously studying the market for strategic growth opportunities. At any given time, we may be in discussion with a number of individuals, practice groups or firms around the world. By Firm policy, we do not comment on such discussions until they are positively concluded.

It's now past 5 PM Eastern time, with no announcement. So check back tomorrow (or later in the week).

Earlier: What the Heller Is Going On?

What's going on over at Heller Ehrman? Darned if we know.

But we don't feel that bad about our ignorance, since even people who work at Heller are in the dark. From the first post in a popular ATL Community thread (btw, nice use of the Community section):

I have noticed that there have been an increased number of hush-hush conversations going on around our office, and I'm sure its happening elsewhere as well. The big questions: are we merging? when will the announcement be?

Good questions. We've reached out to the firm's spokesperson, with whom we've been in contact over the past few weeks, but haven't heard back yet.

Here are the broad outlines of the Heller situation. Lately there have been some very significant partner departures from the firm -- about 35 in the past year, including two top members of the firm's insurance recovery practice, who recently left for Covington & Burling.

As is often the case at firms with lots of partner turnover -- whether it's causation or correlation is an open question -- merger rumors have been swirling around Heller. Despite lots of buzz, contemplated combinations involving Winston & Strawn and Proskauer Rose have not come to pass.

The latest merger candidate: Baker & McKenzie. Read more, after the jump.

There are vague rumors of something afoot at Heller Ehrman. Could the persistent gossip about a merger finally come true? Last week brought this report from TheLawyer.com:

The chairman of US firm Heller Ehrman has refused to rule out a merger after respected litigator Paul Alexander became the seventeenth partner to leave the firm this year. The firm lost 25 partners in 2007 and has lost 17 this year after Alexander quit to join Howrey in Palo Alto. [Ed. note: See links collected at the end of this post for more coverage of partner departures.]

Heller chairman Matt Larrabee told The Lawyer that a merger was one of the options his firm was considering, but maintained that no decision had been taken at this point in time....

The rumour mill has put Heller in talks with a number of firms and Larrabee's refusal to deny that Heller is currently in merger talks will only add to the widely held belief that the firm is nearing a deal.

But it won't be the previously rumored merger with Winston & Strawn, which Heller sources tell us is history. Another possible suitor: Proskauer Rose, which emerged in speculation last month. One Heller tipster likes the idea, noting good geographical fit -- Heller's California and Asia presences nicely complement Proskauer's East Coast focus -- and practice group compatibility ("e.g., pro-policy holder insurance coverage, similar patent practices").

Heller chairman Larrabee told the Lawyer: "I can categorically deny that Heller has concluded we must merge." But internally the message is a bit different. Associates were told in a recent video conference that "the firm is definitely looking to merge, that it is an 'awkward' size for the market."

In the meantime, Heller Ehrman continues to go about its business, including major pro bono matters. For example, working together with the Public Interest Law Project and Bay Area Legal Aid, the firm just filed a lawsuit against Alameda County, challenging the planned termination of general assistance benefits to thousands of indigent individuals. More details here.

Heller chairman coy over merger rumours [The Lawyer]
The bigger the better [The Lawyer]
Culture Wars Take Their Toll on Heller Ehrman [American Lawyer]
Morning Wrap: Partner Defections [The BLT / Blog of the Legal Times]
Heller's Tempestuous San Diego Office Loses 4 [Legal Pad / Cal Law]

Props to our friends over at Dewey & LeBoeuf. Sure, Denim Day is great at all, and their wine-and-cheese events sound like a lot -- maybe too much -- fun.

But DL also thinks of the less fortunate. From an internal email that went around recently:

As news of the devastation in China and Myanmar spreads, and in support of our colleagues and clients in Asia, we recognize a responsibility to support and assist the many thousands of individuals and families in need at this time. Current news reports suggest that the massive earthquake in the Sichuan province of China has already claimed the lives of more than 20,000 people, with numbers that could soar to as many as 50,000. The deadly cyclone of the Myanmar delta region has already claimed over 75,000 lives, with more than 55,000 people still missing and over 1 million people in need of aid.

The firm will match all donations made by our lawyers and administrative staff up to $200,000 to the following four funds designated for relief in China and Myanmar....

Perhaps other law firms are undertaking similar efforts? If your firm is, feel free to note that in the comments.

The complete Dewey & LeBoeuf email, including links to four relief organizations that you can support, appears after the jump.

Update: As noted in the comments, Heller Ehrman is one of the firms stepping up to the plate. The firm is matching employee donations to the Red Cross up to a total of $50,000. Memo after the jump.

Here's an update to yesterday's post about rumors of possible merger talks between Heller Ehrman and Winston & Strawn. Remember, of course, that these are just rumors -- nothing more. Neither firm has offered any substantive comment. So please don't get too excited.

First, as reported by Legal Pad, the domain names of WinstonHeller.com and HellerWinston.com -- previously snapped up by an anonymous buyer -- are available once again. Legal Pad speculates:

Does the unURLing mean any merger is off? Dunno. If we were going to engage in unfounded speculation (one of the main reasons the Internet gods created blogs), we'd say low-grade talks had occurred, so someone grabbed the URLs, then decided to un-grab 'em just to quiet all the, um, unfounded speculation. Working great so far!

Second, just this afternoon, the following email from Winston's managing partner, Tom Fitzgerald, went around the firm:

From: Thompson, Nadja On Behalf Of Thomas Fitzgerald
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 1:49 PM
To: All Business FIRM
Subject:

This morning you may have noticed on the W&S Update an article published referencing the purchase of the domain names "WinstonHeller.com" and "HellerWinston.com," along with rumors of a potential merger between the two firms. W&S Update is an online service that reports all articles about W&S, regardless of content or veracity.

We feel it is important to notify our employees and attorneys that the firm did not secure, nor was it involved in securing, any domain names, including those referenced in the article. We are constantly contacted by other law firms, attorneys, and professional search firms to look at business opportunities which we explore as appropriate. As a matter of policy the firm does not acknowledge or otherwise comment on rumors regarding internal firm business or its clients.

Our tipster's take: "[A] rather shady explanation. They don't address the substance of the rumors, just that they didn't secure the domain names."

Right now we have nothing more than rumors. When we have something more substantive to report, we'll let you know.

Who Dumped WinstonHeller.com ... and Why? [Legal Pad / Cal Law]

Earlier: Law Firm Merger Mania: Winston and Heller, Sitting in a Tree? M-e-r-g-i-n-g?

You're already discussing the rumors in the comments to an unrelated post. So we figure we should probably give you a proper forum for such discussion.

In an earlier post, we alluded to merger rumors involving Heller Ehrman. We didn't name the supposed merger partner at the time, but Legal Pad just did:

Last Friday, wondering about continuing rumors of a Heller Ehrman merger with Chicago’s Winston & Strawn, we decided to check whether anyone had registered any interesting new domain names like, saaaay, www.hellerwinston.com or www.winstonheller.com.

Turns out that only the day before, both were registered to Domains by Proxy, a company which allows privacy-seeking customers to register sites using the company’s contact information. A commenter on Above the Law noted the same discovery Saturday, so when we got to work on Monday, we made some calls. A spokesman for Heller said the firm was not involved.

“We did not authorize any Web company or outside third party to purchase any particular domain or register any Web site,” he said.

Not them? Isn’t cyber-squatting so 1998?

Why the interest in domain name registrations? As you may recall, ATL broke the story of the Dewey Ballantine / LeBoeuf Lamb merger based on a domain name registration. They can be a useful clue to possible law firm combinations.

More discussion, after the jump.

Corporate work may be a bit slow these days, but deal lawyers are still in demand -- and moving around. Reported yesterday over at Legal Pad:

Four corporate and securities partners are leaving Heller Ehrman for DLA Piper in San Diego. The office has been plagued by instability — and defections — in recent years due to the addition in recent years of attorneys from Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison and the Venture Law Group.

Three of the departing attorneys — Michael Kagnoff, Jeffrey Thacker and Ross Burningham — were among a handful of former Brobeck partners considering leaving Heller’s San Diego office after clashing with a managing partner there, Cal Law reported last May.

Heller Managing Partner Rob Hubbell confirmed on Thursday that the trio, and Brobeck veteran Martin Nichols, had announced their exit. “These guys are leaving, but we have a strong practice in that office and we’re quite confident in that office,” he said....

At least 13 attorneys, nearly all partners, have left the firm in 2008, including four sitting practice chairpersons and one former practice head.

In other Heller news, we've heard rumors of possible merger talks involving the firm. But they're a bit vague right now, so we will refrain from mentioning the few specifics that we have heard. If you have any details, feel free to email us. Thanks.

Heller's Tempestuous San Diego Office Loses 4 [Legal Pad / Cal Law]

Here's some happy news from Heller Ehrman. It appears they have heard the complaints, and they've done something about them. From one source:

Attached is the long awaited Heller Ehrman compensation memo, and at first glance, I'm pretty impressed. They seemed to have listened to associates' concerns and made some pretty significant changes. They reinstated the 2000 hour bonus and have decided to retroactively pay the 2000 hour bonus to all eligible associates for 2007. I'm happy about the compensation bump which brings us more in line with the market, but what I'm really excited about is that the firm has decreased the first year billable expectation to 1600 without decreasing salaries. With the launch of a new mentoring program and this announcement about 300 career development hours for first years, the firm is actually acting on its long-stated goal of promoting associate development.

Another tipster concurs, also zeroing in on the new program for first-year associates:

Attached is the Heller Ehrman 2008 Associates Compensation memo, which associates received this morning. I think the compensation memo demonstrates that the firm has responded to associates' concerns in a very positive way. The firm is reinstating the 2000-hour bonus for 2008, and making retroactive 2000-hour bonus payments for 2007.

Perhaps most positively, the firm is providing 300 hours of career development for first-year associates, so that first-years will now have only a 1600-hour billable requirement. I think law students and first-year associates will see this as a very positive development, which recognizes associates' desire for career development, but also gives the firm a way to recognize clients' staffing concerns.

After the bad press the firm has been getting in recent months, I think this memo is some good news, and I hope ATL will recognize it as such.

We do. Check out the memo, after the jump.

Earlier: Associate Bonus Watch: A Heller Ehrman Update

Here's some follow-up on last week's post about bonuses at Heller Ehrman. We don't mean to pick on them, but we have talkative sources over there, it's been a slow day (even setting aside earlier technical difficulties that took the site offline for a while), and this is what we happen to have in the hopper.

A tipster tells us:

[T]he big news from [last week's] meeting was the news that the firm will not be departing in any way from the bonus memo that was put out at the time of Heller's non-raise last summer (click here (PDF)). In other words, a class of 2002 associate with over 2400 hours last year is guaranteed only $45,500 -- approximately $55k less than s/he would have received for billing 2100 hours down the street at Quinn.

After last month's news that MoFo (which had announced a very similar non-raise and bonus structure) was upping everyone's bonus by $10k-$20k, the associates here were hopeful (and basically expected) that Heller would do the same; the firm always claims that it doesn't pay attention to what NY firms or LA firms do (without giving any good explanation, given that it has more associates in those two offices (combined) than it does in SF), and generally names Orrick and MoFo as the firms it looks at as "peers" -- though it notably stopped mentioning Orrick as soon as Orrick raised without slashing bonuses last summer. It's unclear who the firm now sees as its "peers," since I don't know of any AmLaw 100 firms that pay as little as Heller does.

The firm will likely respond to this discontent, if at all, by trotting out its old schtick about how its "culture" is so different from that of law firms that pay more. This may have been true 10 years ago, and is undoubtedly still true if you're comparing it to, say, Skadden. But this place is no different than Orrick or MoFo or Latham in terms of how associates spend their time (and how much of it they spend), and how they're treated. I can't think of any reason I could legitimately give to a law student of why they should come here if they had offers from these other CA firms; I certainly would choose differently if I were a 2L now. Expect increased lateral departures, regardless of what the firm says it will do for bonuses next year.

Earlier: Associate Bonus Watch: Heller Ehrman

Our latest associate bonus news comes from Heller Ehrman. On Monday, we were alerted to their bonus meeting:

Heller has an all-associate video conference tomorrow (Tuesday, 9 a.m. PST) where, among other things, associate compensation will be discussed. Bonus checks are due on Friday, and no one knows what they'll get in advance. (You have an idea based on last year's grid, but that doesn't account for the discretionary bonus, if there is any.)

They've been very quiet, but at a retreat at the Claremont in the Bay Area this past weekend, the opening presentation was extremely negative (although 2008 looks very good so far). A test run?

I don't know if they've done it in the past, but this year associates were asked to justify the non-hours based portion of their bonus in a memo. I would not be surprised, given the recent Heller-related press, to see them go to a non-transparent bonus system.

Heller isn't the only firm where associates are called upon to justify their bonus love. See also Akin Gump (item #2; outside New York).

Oh yes, so the Heller videoconference took place yesterday. If you're interested in what transpired, it's described after the jump.

Some of our prior coverage of Heller Ehrman has been a bit gloomy. We take it all back. Now that the firm's Los Angeles office is under a magnificent new leader -- Nancy Sher Cohen, whom we have previously praised in these pages -- we see nothing but good things ahead.

Legal Pad conducts a very interesting interview with Nancy Cohen. Here's an excerpt:

Legal Pad: How do you feel about “Above the Law” blog calling you “divalicious”?

Cohen: I found out about it from several associate who came to show it to me. Isn’t that funny? I just looked at it and howled. There is a lesson there. You just never know who is going to be writing about you, thinking about you, making comments about you. It’s a reminder that you should always do your best and always be sensitive and nice, civil.

We're confused. Does Ms. Cohen think that we were speaking negatively of her? To the contrary, we had only good things to say. From our prior post:

When we were in private practice, our experiences with Heller Ehrman were quite positive. We attended several depositions defended by the diva-licious Nancy Sher Cohen, who protected her witnesses like a lioness protecting her cubs. We were most impressed by this badass litigatrix (who is also a community activist and cancer survivor; see this profile).

As for the "diva-licious" quip, let the record reflect that the term "diva" is ATL's highest form of praise. Longtime readers are well aware of our obsession with strong-willed women -- especially women who have managed to achieve tremendous success in a traditionally male-dominated field like law.

This is why we are such fans of Senatrix Hillary Clinton, who is a tough, smart, fearless leader. We have no clue why some of you seem to think we don't like her. We think Senator Clinton is fabulous.

Why do you think we've snapped up so many domain names related to her? Visit HillaryClintonIsMyGirl.com, HillaryIsMyGirl.com, Hillarylicious.com, HillaryIsSexy.com, HillarySexy.com, or HillarySex.com. Where do you get redirected to?

'Badass Diva' Ready to Run Heller in L.A. [Legal Pad /CalLaw]

Earlier: Going to Heller in a Handbasket? (Part 2)

Another day, another report of problems for Heller Ehrman. As usual, the bad news comes not from ATL, but from an MSM source -- so don't accuse us of making this stuff up. We're just piggybacking on our friends in the print media.

From the Legal Times:

Like a California Beemer spinning its wheels in Potomac River swampland, San Francisco-based Heller Ehrman just can’t seem to gain traction in Washington.

Last year, the firm’s D.C. head count grew by only one attorney. This year, the office is down eight, from 57 attorneys to 49, a 14 percent decline....

[T]here are also signs of trouble firm-wide. Earlier this month the firm suffered two major losses. Partner Patricia Gillette, who helped anchor Heller’s San Francisco office, jumped to Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. Gillette, who was a co-chairwoman of the labor and employment practice, brought another partner and four associates with her. Jerry Marks, Heller’s former Los Angeles managing partner, has signed on at Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy. In September, the firm also laid off 65 support staff members.

Though the 700-lawyer Heller is still considered a solid firm, its recent losses and its moribund Washington numbers have some observers wondering what is ailing the California power.

Is the Legal Times making a mountain out of a molehill? Or is Heller's D.C. office -- located just down the street from us, with a gigantic silver sign over the door -- really in trouble?

Firm Has D.C. Discontent [Legal Times (subscription)]

Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Heller Ehrman (scroll down)

In the comments to yesterday's post about Heller Ehrman, there was some debate about how grave the firm's current problems are. Last night, more bad news broke, from Legal Pad (via the super-vigilant Blogonaut):

Another day, another Heller lawyer gone. Corporate partner Kyle Guse has jumped from the firm’s Silicon Valley office to McDermott Will & Emery. Guse told Legal Pad that the current rumblings at the roughly 700-lawyer Heller had nothing to do with his decision to leave....

Guse represents biotech and tech companies and said he’ll be bringing his clients with him to the new firm.

So tell us, loyal reader(s), what is going on at Heller? Are more partners going to leave? Will captain Matt Larrabee guide the firm to safety?

ATL readers: any thoughts?

For the record, we take no pleasure in Heller Ehrman's difficulties; we're just covering a story. When we were in private practice, our experiences with Heller Ehrman were quite positive. We attended several depositions defended by the diva-licious Nancy Sher Cohen, who protected her witnesses like a lioness protecting her cubs. We were most impressed by this badass litigatrix (who is also a community activist and cancer survivor; see this profile).

P.S. And the cookies served in Heller's New York office were delicious! No matter what happens to the firm, we hope that the cookie recipe will be preserved for posterity.

Corporate Partner Exits Heller Ehrman [Legal Pad / Cal Law]
More Bad News for Heller: Yet Another Partner Defection [Blogonaut]
Sher Cohen’s Law & Order: Justice Unit [JewishJournal.com]

Earlier: Going to Heller in a Handbasket? (Part 1)