Lateral Moves

Career Center: For Fifth Year Associates, It’s Decision Time

By Above the Law

This week, Lateral Link Director Tricia McGrath shares the inside scoop on what fifth years need to do to make sure they stay on track to become partner, and avoid the pitfalls that come with being passed over continually.

Law firm economics changed substantially over the past decade. Law firms now run like “businesses,” in corporate America parlance. In the last few years, many associates at top firms who thought that they were “on track” for partnership were unexpectedly passed over. Unfortunately, market conditions suggest that many more will be passed over in future years.

As a recruiter, I frequently speak with senior associates who were on the wrong side of partnership decisions, and as a result, realized the “out” side of the firm’s “up-and-out” policy. Many of these overlooked associates are now wondering how the train went off the track so quickly. Don’t the years of solid billables and strong reviews account for anything? For most of these associates, their best-case scenarios are a new position at another Biglaw firm with a three-year partner look — often going in to their new firm as a fifth or sixth year — or an in-house position at significantly less compensation (in most cases). Often, neither of these options is particularly attractive for the candidate.

How can you protect yourself from becoming a senior associate who has been passed over, has no business, and has limited job prospects?

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Career Center: State of the Market – Florida

By Above the Law

Lateral Link Director Scott Hodes gives his assessment on one of the nation’s hottest lateral markets in recent years.

Florida has continued to represent one of the most active states in the country in terms of hiring. 2011 saw a resurgence of positions in almost all areas, which is good news for 2012 and beyond.

Litigation positions represented an overwhelmingly large portion of the lateral market, with corporate positions making up the next largest group of lateral opportunities….

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Quote of the Day: That’s One Stinky Cologne

By Staci Zaretsky

After staying away in 2010, firms have returned to the lateral market at boom-time levels. But this hiring binge is driven by desperation, not a thriving economy.

– A headline seen in today’s edition of the American Lawyer. The magazine confirms that in 2011, 2,454 partners left or joined Am Law 200 firms. Lateral hiring might be up, but at what cost?

Morning Docket: 02.01.12

By Staci Zaretsky

Snooki and J-WOWW

* Florida: a place where people don’t care about your income tax returns. Mitt Romney dominated the state’s primary, grabbing all 50 of the delegates needed for the Republican nomination. [New York Times]

* Entry-level hiring might be down, but lateral hiring is being approached like an NFL draft. Biglaw firms want the best of the best, and if they have to poach partners to get what they want, they will. [Wall Street Journal]

* In the wake of scandal, Edwards Wildman has named a new managing partner. Robert Shuftan will take up the position tomorrow, and he’ll get first dibs on all of the partners’ wives. [Boston Business Journal]

* Paul Ceglia was ordered to pay Facebook’s legal fees, and now he’s crying over Gibson Dunn’s Biglaw price tag. Instead, he wants to pay podunk fees for his podunk town. [Bloomberg]

* Some cities in New Jersey don’t like pollution — they want to keep the trash down the shore. Hoboken’s mayor has denied MTV’s film permit request for Snooki and J-WOWW’s spinoff show. [New York Post]

Career Center: State of the Market – Atlanta

By Above the Law

This week, Lateral Link Director Scott Hodes gives us some insight into the increase in lateral hirings in the Empire State of the South.

Atlanta has emerged as one of the best lateral associate markets in the country. While 2009 was slow as in most markets, 2010 signaled a comeback, and 2011 confirmed the upward trend.

Corporate and litigation positions represented the largest amount of lateral openings, which is fairly typical in large markets. Corporate positions seemed to peak in the second and third quarters, while litigation was fairly steady throughout the year. There was also a huge boom in intellectual property positions, especially in the last three quarters, followed not too far behind by labor and employment, which remained steady throughout 2011….

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Career Center: State of the Market – Texas (Part 3)

By Above the Law

As mentioned previously, these State of the Market posts by Lateral Link, as compiled by Director Gary Cohen, will focus on one of the country’s largest states — Texas.

The strongest market in Texas is Houston, with some of the strongest candidates being those with corporate, capital markets, or finance experience. A close second is Dallas, and a distant third in terms of strong markets in the Lone Star State is Austin….

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Morning Docket: 01.26.12

By Staci Zaretsky

* Illinois is suing Standard & Poor’s, accusing the financial services company of misleading investors and putting the country in the poorhouse thanks to its high ratings for mortgage-backed investments. [Washington Post]

* CHECK YOU LATERALS: William Burck, who served in the White House counsel’s office under President Bush, is leaving Weil to co-manage the Washington, D.C. office of Quinn Emanuel. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Groupon: now ethical for advertising legal services in New York thanks to this recent opinion from the New York Bar Association Committee on Ethics. Will Biglaw start catering to deal hunters? Prediction: hell no. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Get off my lawn, you damn kids! A lawyer from Long Island was arrested after firing a warning shot into the air and holding a neighborhood teen at gunpoint following several rounds of “ding dong ditch.” [CBS New York]

* A woman is suing Lindsay Lohan, claiming that LiLo hit her with her Maserati. She’s suffered from disabling personal injuries, pain, anguish, and a lack of settlement money. [Daily Mail]

* After an alleged freaky sex-and-drugs party, all Angelica Marie Cecora wants from Oscar de la Hoya is $5M and an apology. Is that really too much to ask? [New York Daily News]

Career Center: State of the Market – Texas (Part 2)

By Above the Law

As mentioned previously, the next few State of the Market posts by Lateral Link, as compiled by Director Gary Cohen, will focus on one of the country’s largest states — Texas.

The strongest market in Texas is Houston, with some of the strongest candidates being those with corporate, capital markets, or finance experience. A close second is Dallas, which is also the focus of this post….

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Career Center: State of the Market – Texas (Part 1)

By Above the Law

The next few State of the Market posts by Lateral Link, as compiled by Director Gary Cohen, will focus on one of the country’s largest states — Texas.

In general, lateral hiring activity in Texas has increased substantially in the past 12 months, with even greater momentum as we head into 2012. Corporate/securities and IP are the busiest major practice areas across the state; however, there are differences between the Dallas, Houston and Austin markets. Overall, the Houston market is the strongest, followed by Dallas, with Austin a distant third. In all markets, partners with solid books of portable business are viable and firms are always on the hunt for new partner-level talent….

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Out of the Frying Pan

By The People's Therapist

Ed. note: This post is by Will Meyerhofer, a former Sullivan & Cromwell attorney turned psychotherapist. He holds degrees from Harvard, NYU Law, and The Hunter College School of Social Work, and he blogs at The People’s Therapist. His new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist, is available on Amazon, as is his previous book, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy (affiliate links).

At some point you have to get out of here. The question is when – and whither.

A vacation might help, if you could achieve the impossible and take one. My client pulled off a week – seven whole days! – at a Caribbean resort. She flew off to paradise, only to return feeling like a condemned prisoner.

“It made things worse,” she lamented. “Now I remember the outside world.”

Sometimes it’s better to live without that distraction….

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Career Center: State of the Market – Washington, D.C.

By Above the Law

Last week, we discussed the end of the legal recession, and we made some predictions about 2012. Many of you were interested in more information on your specific market, so today, we’re launching a new Career Center series: “State of the Market.”

Over the coming weeks, we will discuss hiring prospects in major legal markets based on analysis by Lateral Link‘s recruiting team.

We start with our nation’s capitol, Washington, D.C….

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Musical Chairs: Energy Lawyers in Motion

By David Lat

Yesterday Elie offered some predictions for 2012. I’ll get even more specific and offer a prediction for January 2012: energy lawyers will be making moves this month.

January is generally a popular time for partner moves, and energy lawyers are popular people. Right now their practice area is as hot as New York City is cold. As you may recall, this time last year a slew of energy attorneys moved from McDermott to Cadwalader.

We’ve recently received word that at least two prominent partners in the energy space are switching firms. Let’s find out who they are and where they are heading….

UPDATE (2:30 PM): After the jump, we’ve added an update with additional context, details, and partner names. A source states that five partners are leaving and that the departures constitute a major move — a much bigger deal than our original report might have suggested.

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Musical Chairs: Orrick Assembles an Impressive Team of Finance and High-Yield Lawyers

By David Lat

The law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe continues to do battle with its former client, MGA Entertainment. It seems that the maker of Bratz dolls is still acting in bratty fashion, by not paying its legal bills, and Orrick has moved to withdraw from representing MGA. (This is not the first time that Orrick has tried to fire its difficult client.)

Fortunately, things are happier on the transactional side for Orrick. The firm just announced that it’s picking up five bank finance and high-yield partners, for its New York office.

The new arrivals come from four different places, including three firms whose names you will definitely recognize….

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Musical Chairs: Paul Hastings Snags Another Leveraged Finance Partner from Cahill

By David Lat

Back in March, we wrote about the mysterious departure from Cahill Gordon of leveraged finance partner Michael Michetti. Now, three months later, we can report that the Michael Michetti mystery has been solved: he is joining Paul Hastings, which just trumpeted his arrival in a press release.

Michetti is not the first former Cahill partner to join Paul Hastings in 2011. Just last month, Rich Farley, another leveraged finance partner, hopped over to Paul Hastings.

On the whole, Cahill has been flourishing as a firm — and sharing the bounty with its associates. Recall the firm’s recent mid-year bonuses, which were very well-received.

But do the departures of Messrs. Farley and Michetti reflect trouble in paradise? Let’s hear some of the scuttlebutt….

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Inside Straight: Loving Laterals

By Mark Herrmann

Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.

Why are lateral partners like pigs?

No, no! I didn’t mean it that way!

I’m just remembering the line from George Orwell’s Animal Farm — “Four legs good, two legs bad!”

Thirty years ago, law firms took pride in having only homegrown partners: “Homegrown good, laterals bad!” There was a certain logic to that. If you’d worked with a lawyer from his first day out of law school or a clerkship and seen the lawyer progress in the law, then after six (or eight, or ten) years, you had a pretty good sense of that human being, both as a person and as a lawyer. When you made a partnership decision, you could be fairly comfortable that you were working from a decent base of knowledge.

Law firms knew this, and they flaunted it.

Places bragged that all (or nearly all) partners were homegrown. Firms tried to convince their lawyers to stay put. (In 1979, one former Cravath lawyer told me that the firm had a mantra, “You only leave Cravath once.” There was no going home again.) Firms didn’t hire laterals, and firms bragged about it: “Homegrown good, laterals bad!”

That was then; now is now. Based on where I sit, on the receiving end of many law firm marketing communications, times have changed….

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Non-Sequiturs 11.24.09

By Elie Mystal

washingtonian issue.jpg* Washingtonian Magazine’s December issue is devoted to lawyers. The magazine enlisted Kash and Lat to write the cover story: “Why Lawyers Make So Much Money.” Staff writer Marisa Kashino, formerly of the National Law Journal, names D.C.’s 30 top lawyers and writes about what it takes to make partner these days. Check it out on newsstands now. [Washingtonian Magazine]

* One website is tracking lateral hiring in the legal world. [Legal Blog Watch]

* Black taco? [Gothamist]

* I’d make a joke about ATL favorite Paul Bergrin, but I’m afraid of him. [TPM Muckracker / Talking Points Memo]

* Maybe Justice Scalia can’t separate his intellectual life from his spiritual life, but I sure can. Of course, it helps that my priest doesn’t read Above the Law. [Slate]

* Criminal justice work at the NAACP is about to get a huge shot in the arm. We are all on notice. [People]

Nationwide Layoff Watch: More Cadwalader Coverage
(Because You Just Can’t Get Enough, It Seems)

By David Lat

Cadwalader Wickersham Taft CWT Abovethelaw Above the Law legal tabloid blog.JPGWe resume our wall-to-wall coverage of the recent associate layoffs at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. Here are the latest news articles and tidbits:
1. Highlights from an article by Anthony Lin, in the New York Law Journal:

[M]ost of the laid-off lawyers worked in Cadwalader’s New York headquarters though the firm’s Charlotte, N.C., office was also affected. All were in the firm’s global finance and capital markets practices. Almost all of the affected lawyers were associates, said [management committee member Gregory] Markel, though he said one or two counsel may also have been let go.

[Per Markel:] “We concluded that this was not a three-month phenomenon or even a six-month phenomenon.”

Mr. Markel also said the firm was confident there would be no more layoffs in the future. After yesterday’s action, the firm will still have around 260 lawyers in the two affected practices.

A number of law firms active in the area have already announced cutbacks. Clifford Chance terminated a six-lawyer group in November. Thacher Proffitt & Wood and McKee Nelson both have offered buyouts to large numbers of associates working in the area.

2. Highlights from an article by Nathan Koppel, in the Wall Street Journal (via the Law Blog):

“We were very careful about this, and we waited to see if there were any signs of the economy turning around” before letting lawyers go, says Cadwalader partner Gregory Markel, chairman of the firm’s litigation department. “We didn’t see any evidence of this turning around.”

Cadwalader is one of the most prominent law firms to recently announce layoffs, which could trigger a chain reaction among other firms; capital markets and real-estate practices are down at many firms.

It is still relatively rare for large law firms to engage in mass staff reductions. For one, many large law firms boast specialties, such as litigation and bankruptcy, that typically pick up during down economies.

3. From an observant tipster not at CWT (and presumably happy about it):

“CWT apparently doesn’t update its lateral recruiting page very often, as it currently claims to be looking for structured finance and capital markets attorneys in several offices. See here.”

4. From a source at the firm, an interesting theory about how the news was disseminated, including a possible explanation for why it wasn’t announced announced internally first:

[A] partner in Corporate leaked all this information about the Capital Markets situation to a bunch of associates. Some of it was false, some true. [Management was] really upset with him because they wanted this information to come in an official announcement or meeting, not in rumors flying around.

I’m thinking they accelerated the press announcement because the information started leaking to outside sources, rather than staying inside. I still definitely think that they could have released it internally first, but there may have been other circumstances that I don’t know about. I am not sure if the press release and the corporate partner things are related, but it seems like they would not have released it so abruptly if it didn’t happen. Whenever something major happens, it is usually disclosed internally first.

5. Finally, in case you missed it — we posted it fairly late yesterday, as a mere update to a previously published post — here is CWT’s reassuring email to 2007 summer associates who accepted their offers to return full-time.
Cadwalader Laying Off 35 In Wake of Slumping Markets [New York Law Journal]
Law Firm Cadwalader To Lay Off 35 Attorneys [Wall Street Journal]
More on the Sackings at Cadwalader [WSJ Law Blog]