Thanks to everyone who responded to our recent request for information about 2011 bonuses at Morgan Lewis & Bockius. Here’s our report on bonuses at MLB.
As you may recall, Morgan Lewis pays individualized bonuses, so there’s no tidy table as there is for lockstep firms. Feel free to use this post as an open thread for MLB bonuses — you can compare amounts anonymously, in the comments.
How are Morgan Lewis associates feeling about their bonuses? We’ll get the ball rolling with some tips that we’ve received….
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Morgan Lewis & Bucks-ius”
Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook: do not mess with this man.
Aficionados of appellate law are familiar with the Seventh Circuit’s reputation for procedural punctiliousness. The court has a track record of benchslapping lawyers who fail to follow rules, lawyers who seek to deviate from rules without justification, lawyers who engage in substandard advocacy, and lawyers who are “menace[s]” to their clients.
Lately the Seventh Circuit has been laying down its pimp hand. Last Friday, for example, Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook declared one Bridget Boyle-Saxton, who allegedly blew deadlines and ignored multiple orders to show cause, “unfit to practice law in this court.” Ouch.
Now, snobs might think, “Sure, Boyle-Saxton might be a well-known Milwaukee lawyer — but she works at a small law firm, apparently with two relatives of hers. What can you expect from such an outfit? This is why people hire the large white-shoe law firms. You pay through the nose, but you expect (and receive) perfection.”
If that’s your attitude, think again. Biglaw just got a big benchslap — from none other than Chief Judge Easterbrook.
Which firm incurred His Honor’s wrath, and for what alleged infraction?
Continue reading “Benchslap of the Day: Judge Easterbrook Benchslaps Biglaw”
Whenever a person passes away while they are literally at their desk, we feel compelled to mention it. When these kinds of things happen, it affects a much wider circle of people than the family and friends of the deceased. It’s almost impossible not to think of your own mortality — and what you are doing with the limited time you have — when confronted with a person who passed away while diligently working and serving his clients.
For many people, working in Biglaw until the day they die would sound like a nightmare. The nature of the profession is that the high salaries and high status attract a number of people to the field who have no desire to actually practice law or service clients over the long term. There are so many people in Biglaw who are there to make enough money so they can do other things with their life. There are so many who are trying to get out before they end up there forever.
But there are others who are in Biglaw because they like it. There are those who honestly love the work, people who get so much intellectual and even emotional satisfaction from the work that their salary and status are non-concerns.
From all indications, Mark P. Edwards, a partner at Morgan Lewis & Bockius who died at his desk on Friday, was one of those people. His friends and family will mourn that his life was too short, but hopefully they will feel that he died doing what he wanted to do….
Continue reading “Morgan Lewis Partner Passes Away in Office”
The troubled law firm of Howrey has previously been compared to a ship. If the comparison is accurate, then one has to wonder whether the ship be sinking.
Look at how many sailors — officers, even — are abandoning ship. The latest news: eleven Howrey lawyers have left for Morgan Lewis & Bockius, in Chicago and California.
A look at the departing attorneys — plus reports about recent and upcoming Howrey conference calls, and questions about the fate of those holding offers from the firm — after the jump….
Continue reading “Howrey Going to Hold On to Partners? Eleven Lawyers Leave for Morgan Lewis”
This week brought annual reviews and individual bonus news for associates at Morgan Lewis & Bockius. Today (Friday) is payday, so everyone at MLB should know their bonus by now (or fairly soon).
Back in November, firm chairman Francis M. Milone stated that 2010 bonuses would be “substantially larger” than last year. So that set expectations fairly high.
Did the MLB bonuses live up to the hype?
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Morgan Lewis & Bockius”
Morgan Lewis & Bockius associates: your long nightmare might be at an end. All the way back in July of 2009, MLB became one of the first firms to announce its intention to do away with lockstep compensation. Back then, the firm was still in the teeth of the recession, it had canceled its 2010 summer program, and at MLB (and firms around the country) killing lockstep and moving towards a low base-salary, high merit-based bonus structure for associates seemed like an appealing way to reduce employee costs.
But months and months passed without MLB actually implementing anything. We kept hearing vague “details” about the new merit-based system, but nothing actually became formalized, even as other firms went full steam ahead into the merit-based unknown.
Well, the uncertainty is over. At a video-conference yesterday, Morgan Lewis chairman Francis M. Milone announced that the firm is mothballing plans to move towards a fully merit-based system for associate compensation and development. At least not in the three-tier, random factors for advancement, format that some firms rushed to implement in 2009.
Oh, and bonuses are supposed to “substantially larger” than last year for MLB associates…
Continue reading “Morgan Lewis: Anticipates Large Bonus Pool and Not Moving Towards Merit-Based Compensation”
Greetings, loved ones. Hello there, California girls (and boys). We hope that you’re doing well. Gay marriage might be on hold for now, but there are other unions to celebrate on the West Coast.
Like unions between law firms and job-seeking law students. As we’ve discussed in these pages before, on-campus interviewing at law schools seems to be on the upswing.
And it’s not just in New York, where schools like Columbia and NYU report increased interviewing activity. It’s happening in California too, as reported by Sara Randazzo and Kari Hamanaka of the Daily Journal:
Career counselors around the state are reporting that the number of employers signing on to the recruiting process this year is either steady or up slightly. The mood, however, is still tempered by the reality that the recruiting climate is nowhere near the fever pitch preceding the downturn when there were barely enough top law students to go around for associate-hungry firms.
“When I talk to lawyers in the field, it seems things are busier, but given all the excess in the hiring pipelines they are still very conservative,” said Terrence Galligan, assistant dean of career development at UC Berkeley School of Law.
Well, conservative can be good (and not just politically). The conservative hiring of summer associates for 2010, for example, seems to have resulted in very high offer rates.
For 2011, some firms that stayed on the sidelines in 2010 are back in the game….
Continue reading “Fall Recruiting Glitters in the Golden State”
We’re doing our annual march through the Vault prestige rankings, to give ATL readers the opportunity to have their say about perks and pitfalls at these firms. If your firm actually let you swap your Blackberry for your iPhone, brag here. Or if your firm has such a strong stench that it makes you nauseous, vent here.
We’ve been doing open threads in batches of ten, but now we’re going to pick up the pace. Here are the Vault #41 – 60. This is when the prestige list gets a little more geographically diverse, with firms based in Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Palo Alto and even Pittsburgh:
41. Winston & Strawn
42. Baker Botts
43. Jenner & Block
44. Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft
45. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
46. Proskauer Rose
47 (tie). Dewey & LeBoeuf
47 (tie). King & Spalding
48. Goodwin Procter
49. Baker & McKenzie
50. Fulbright & Jaworski
51. Vinson & Elkins
52. McDermott Will & Emery
53. DLA Piper
54. Morgan Lewis & Bockius
55. Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman
56. Bingham McCutchen LLP
57. Dechert LLP
58. Cooley LLP
59. K&L Gates LLP
60. Alston & Bird LLP
We took a spin through their Vault rankings and awarded superlatives, after the jump.
Continue reading “Fall Recruiting Open Threads: Vault 41 – 60 (2011)”
We have good news for Morgan, Lewis & Bockius associates. Salary information is in and most people are getting raises. True-up raises at that. The class of 2008 pulled the short straw, but everybody else seems relatively happy. A tipster reports:
Please post that yesterday MLB essentially unfroze salaries (most ’08 grades only went up to 165 though) but otherwise made everyone whole, retroactive January 1, 2010.
The double-bump raise for veteran associates comes a couple of months after MLB announced big time raises for a select few associates — while most of the firm’s associates were left to wait and wonder. In January, we reported this message from Morgan Lewis Chairman, Francis M. Milone:
After considering all of these factors, we awarded base salary increases of up to $25,000 and incentive bonuses of up to $35,000 to our highest performing associates. As I advised in my November video presentation, we did not reduce associate base salaries.
According to the firm, the decision to give true-up raises to mostly everybody is in keeping with MLB’s new merit-based strategy …
Continue reading “Nationwide Salary Watch: Morgan Lewis Raises Salaries”
The profit gods did not smile upon Morgan Lewis & Bockius in 2009. Not on the partnership, not on the associates. We’ve already reported on MLB’s various attempts to change its associate pay scale. But making employee costs “merit-based” wasn’t enough to keep Morgan Lewis profits growing. Am Law Daily reports:
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius saw declines in revenue and profits in 2009 as a general economic slowdown and a hiring spree impacted the firm’s bottom line.
As of September 30, the end of Morgan Lewis’s fiscal year, 2009 revenue declined by nearly 5 percent to $1.07 billion from $1.12 billion in 2008. Profits per equity partner (PPP) dropped 15 percent to 2006 levels. The firm’s 2009 financials contrast sharply from 2008–that year, Morgan Lewis saw an 8 percent boost in PPP.
“We knew we dodged the bullet [in 2008], but we knew the hit was coming later,” says managing partner Thomas Sharbaugh.
Hiring spree? Morgan Lewis has deferred associates, laid off associates, and canceled its summer program. I think MLB has been on a different kind of “spree” — the kind that racks up a body count.
The firm’s cost cutting measures were more than counterbalanced by significant new investments in lateral hires, says Sharbaugh. Morgan Lewis hired 55 new lawyers in the last fiscal year, nearly double the number of lateral hires made in 2008.
Oh, I see. Morgan Lewis is using laterals to replace people that they’ve laid off or deferred. Well, that’s a plan, I guess.
But for that plan to work, laterals have to want to come to the firm. Usually attracting laterals involves paying them competitively. Is MLB doing that?
Continue reading “Morgan Lewis: Not Enough Pie for Everybody”
Back in July, Morgan Lewis & Bockius became one of the first firms to announce that it was doing away with lockstep associate compensation. Sadly, MLB is still lagging behind other firms in explaining precisely what that change means for its associates.
Morgan Lewis’s chairman, Francis M. Milone, sent out a firm-wide email to MLB associates today. In the words of one tipster: “It’s elusive and vague as expected.”
Regarding the death of lockstep, here is the key paragraph from the memo:
[W]ith respect to compensation, as I previously described, we have moved away from lockstep in favor of a compensation model that places more emphasis on individual performance and contributions. While an attorney’s relative performance has served as the driving factor in awarding bonuses in recent years, it has played less of a role in setting base salaries. This year, in establishing base salaries and bonuses, we gave increased weight to a wide variety of factors such as the quality of an attorney’s work, the value provided to clients, industry level, including pro bono commitments, nonbillable contributions such as Firm citizenship and business development efforts, client service, and experience level. After considering all of these factors, we awarded base salary increases of up to $25,000 and incentive bonuses of up to $35,000 to our highest performing associates. As I advised in my November video presentation, we did not reduce associate base salaries.
They used an awful lot of words to explain that they were not going to let people know how much they are making relative to everyone else.
Did anybody from Morgan Lewis receive a $25K raise and a $30K bonus? Perhaps the more important question is: did more than one person at MLB receive a $25K raise and a $30K bonus?
More from the memo and our tipsters, after the jump.
Continue reading “Morgan Lewis: Details Still Sketchy on its Merit Based Compensation”
On Wednesday, we commended the firm of Paul Hastings for moving so quickly to support Haiti earthquake relief efforts. Since then, a number of other top law firms have pledged their support to this worthy cause.
(Okay, Rush Limbaugh questions the worthiness of the cause. But we suspect that Limbaugh’s position — like that of Pat Robertson, who blames the earthquake on Haiti’s supposed pact with the devil — is a minority view.)
The WSJ Law Blog and Am Law Daily have gathered information about what various law firms are doing to help Haiti. We’ve combined their reports with information we’ve received from our own sources, to create a more comprehensive list.
Check it out, after the jump.
Continue reading “Update: More Law Firms Help Out Haiti”
A couple of weeks ago, we asked if deferred associates should be invited to the firm holiday party. I argued that although these deferred associates were not employees of the firm, a holiday invite would be a nice gesture.
Roughly 60% of ATL voters agreed. We don’t know how many firms are paying attention, but hopefully some of them will extend a courtesy invitation to their incoming class.
Today, we have an entirely different question. Former Morgan Lewis & Bockius associates received the firm’s “alumni” packet. The laid-off associates we spoke with were not that thrilled:
Some people might consider this a “nice” gesture. Me, I think it’s pure douchery. I was laid off from Morgan Lewis back in March. Today, I got an invitation to their December holiday party. Seriously? I mean, I still have some friends there, but do the partners who fired me really think I want to rub elbows & pretend to be friendly with them one more time?
Not only that, the invitation is merely the first paragraph of an extremely long (eight-page!) letter celebrating the firm’s glories over the past year. And I am assured that “we are fortunate to have the firm’s unwavering culture of service fueling our relationships with clients and in the community.” Wow, thanks.
- Former MLB Associate
Morgan Lewis laid off 216 people back in March: 55 attorneys and 161 staffers. So there are a lot of former-MLB people out there who do not think the past year was all that successful.
Despite the carnage, Morgan Lewis is still treating these former employees as alumni of the firm. A Morgan Lewis spokesperson confirms that the holiday invitation was not a glitch….
Continue reading “Laid-Off Associates on the Morgan Lewis Holiday Party Invite List”
In July, Morgan Lewis & Bockius announced that it would be ending lockstep compensation for its associates in 2010. At the time, the firm furnished this statement to Above the Law:
“We’re running our own business and focusing relentlessly on client relationships,” said Francis M. Milone, Chair of the Firm. “Doing so responsibly means continuing to reduce expenses, committing to the people in whom we are already invested, and looking at compensation across the board to ensure our structure matches the reality the entire legal industry must face.”
The July announcement was the culmination of the effort made by MLB and its chairman, Francis Malone, to reform the Biglaw business model. Back in April, Milone gave an interesting interview to the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Question: Law firms are still very profitable. Why do they need to downsize?
Answer: You have to make a judgment about whether you can keep people busy going forward. It is not healthy for a lawyer to not be busy, to have free time on his or her hands. You don’t grow, you don’t develop, you’re not happy.
And from a cultural perspective, you don’t want to build a firm that culturally is populated by a lot of people, or too many people, who don’t have enough to do.
Q: Is that the only reason?
A: The other piece of it is the feedback we got from clients. Because they’re looking at the way they want law firms to act. They’re not going to be as willing to pay, frankly, to train new lawyers. So it’s going to be harder to find things for new lawyers to do. And when we’re paying new lawyers $160,000 and clients don’t want to pay for them, you’re putting them in a position where there may not be a lot of things for them to do.
Well, 2010 is almost upon us. But MLB is suddenly not so excited about ending lockstep compensation. Milone conducted a firm-wide video conference yesterday, and tipsters report his enthusiasm for ending lockstep compensation was noticeably lacking.
Details and a statement from the firm, after the jump.
Continue reading “Morgan Lewis Delays the Death of Lockstep”
We’re now into the back half of the brand new Vault law firm rankings. Just like last year, we worry about a proliferation of “TTT” accusations in the comment threads. But such terms of art can miss the positives of many of the firms in this section of the Vault rankings. Here’s the list:
51. Fulbright & Jaworski
52. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
53. Morgan Lewis & Bockius
54. McDermott Will & Emery
55. Alston & Bird
56. Bingham McCutchen
57. Fish & Richardson
58. Dechert
59. Greenberg Traurig
60. Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft
We have already extensively talked about the Morgan Lewis situation. Let’s move on to other firms after the jump.
Continue reading “Fall Recruiting Open Thread: Vault 51 – 60 (2010)”
Morgan Lewis & Bockius has finally come clean about its offer rates to its 2009 summer class. The numbers are not pretty. The Legal Intelligencer reports:
Now that the firm has finished informing summer associates of their status and has made a firmwide announcement Tuesday morning regarding the decisions, Morgan Lewis has provided more concrete numbers when it comes to offer rates.
Firmwide hiring partner Eric Kraeutler said there were 102 eligible 2Ls across the country in this year’s summer program. Of that group, 28, or 27.5 percent, were given offers to start as first-year associates in the fall of 2011 — a year later than would normally be the case given the deferrals of the 2009 first-year class until the fall of 2010.
Last week we reported that MLB would be “extend[ing] only a limited number of offers.” The Morgan Lewis offer rate is certainly limited, but the numbers are much lower than what we’ve seen so far from peer firms.
And remember that Morgan Lewis has already canceled its 2010 summer program. So if the firm needs any more fresh talent over the next couple of years, it will have to be successful in the lateral market. That might be hard to do if the firm slashes base pay as it moves to a “performance based” compensation model.
After the jump, let’s take a look at offer rates in specific offices.
Continue reading “Morgan Lewis No Offer Follow Up”
Ed. Note: This post has been updated (as reflected in the edited title). Please keep reading.
The offer calls for Morgan, Lewis & Bockius went out today, and associates who summered with the firm’s Washington office are receiving some especially difficult news: zero offers.
Update: Morgan Lewis responded with this statement:
Rumors you reported of zero offers in DC are false. We are giving offers in every large office of the firm. Due to the difficulty of predicting 2011 staffing needs, we have today extended only a limited number of offers. To assist those who have not received offers in seeking other opportunities, we will provide a letter to prospective employers that explains the circumstances surrounding our summer program, in the hopes that as these students enter the legal profession, they will be able to obtain employment opportunities commensurate with their qualifications and performance.
The firm refused to elaborate on just how many offers constitute the “limited number of offers” the firm extended. Above the Law has independently confirmed a report of one (1) offer extended at Morgan Lewis in D.C. Is there anybody else? Feel free to email us.
Multiple tipsters from D.C. are reporting phone calls like this one:
They just called. They’re not giving offers this year. They’re re-evaluating next fall for hiring needs for the following year and writing the summers a letter explaining that they were awesome. … [T]he head recruiter honestly sounded like she had been crying … Apparently they’re going to “stay in touch” over the next year to see what’s going on.
According to NALP, Morgan Lewis expected 17 2L summers and 2 1L summers for their 2009 summer program in D.C.
We are still collecting information about Morgan Lewis’s firm-wide offer rate. More details, plus an update from Philadelphia, after the jump.
Continue reading “Nationwide No Offer Watch: Zero Offer Extended At Morgan Lewis D.C.”
A month and a half ago, Morgan Lewis announced that it was canceling its 2010 summer program and moving away from lockstep compensation. At the time, some people criticized me for looking at a move away from lockstep compensation as tantamount to a salary cut.
A firm could move away from lockstep to give its associates a larger share of the profits they generate. Is that what Morgan Lewis is thinking?
Morgan Lewis is in the process of holding a series of meetings with associates in various offices. The goal is to let the associates know what the firm is planning to do with salaries starting January 1, 2010.
According to a firm spokesperson, these meetings are preliminary in nature:
As our Chair announced earlier this year, we have decided to move away from lockstep to a performance-based evaluation and compensation model. We are still in the process of developing the new model and are meeting with associates around the firm to solicit their input. We have not yet determined or announced any specific terms of the model, so any reports regarding compensation cuts at this point are pure speculation and false rumor.
Associates who have been in these meetings have a different take on what’s going on.
Continue reading “Morgan Lewis’s New Compensation Structure = Less Base Compensation?”
Based on a Washington Post article profiling the Five O’Clock Club, an outplacement and career coaching company, we constructed a Biglaw blind item:
Which New York law firm, having already completed two rounds of layoffs, has hired the Five O’Clock Club to help it carry out additional layoffs (in August, October, and November)?
After we ran the item, several firms came forward to declare they’re not the firm in question. And now they’re joined by one more: Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.
A spokesperson for Morgan Lewis contacted ATL to say that it isn’t the firm with layoffs in the works. In fact, Morgan Lewis claims that it shouldn’t even be on the shortlist of contenders.
Read why — and check out the list of the Five O’Clock Club’s clients, including some very prestigious law firms that haven’t publicly admitted to layoffs — after the jump.
Continue reading “Blind Item Follow-Up: Morgan Lewis Also Denies Layoffs
(Plus a look at the Five O’Clock Club’s law firm clients.)”
We are living in a bizzaro world. Check out this fact pattern:
There’s a partner at Morgan Lewis with 18 years of experience. Morgan Lewis cancels its entire 2010 Summer Program. Partner leaves Morgan Lewis. For a more lucrative gig? No. He leaves to be the new head of career services at UVA Law School.
UVA Law has just hired Kevin Donovan, a former litigation partner at Morgan Lewis.
First of all, who leaves a partnership for a career services gig?
Secondly, the irony of a partner at a firm that just refused to hire rising 2Ls being in charge of finding jobs for rising 2Ls is rich. Is this some kind of twisted Marshal Plan? First you bomb it, then you build it?
After the jump, let’s take a look at Mr. Donovan’s qualifications and vision for UVA law students.
Continue reading “News From Upside Down World”
