O’Melveny & Myers

More Departures at O’Melveny & Myers: Paying Partners To Go Away

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O'Melveny Myers LLP logo Above the Law blog.jpgThe latest departures from OMM (1) involve partners and (2) appear to be voluntary. From the Legal Pad:

Legal Pad is still chasing information about O’Melveny & Myers’ early retirement program…. Details are dribbling out, but the firm is officially pretty tight-lipped so far.

“It’s strictly voluntary,” the firm said in a statement today. “We’ve implemented this type of program in the past and this is nothing new for our firm or law firms in general.”

The temporary option was offered for a window of time — how long isn’t clear to us yet, but we hear the window’s closed now — to all partners over age 50 who met certain requirements, such as length of tenure at the firm, according to a source close to O’Melveny management.

And maybe profitability? From an earlier post at Legal Pad:

[One departing partner] didn’t want to go into too much detail about the retirement buyout, but he did say it’s temporary and available to partners age 50 and up. We’re wondering whether there are any other conditions on the offer, how many people are taking it, when it went into effect, and whether yet another year of flat partner profits motivated it.

One knowledgeable but anonymous observer familiar with how L.A. law firms’ finances work speculated that the firm probably took a look its profitability curve and “maybe found out that the older guys aren’t sprinting, but trotting.”

This O’Melveny makeover reminds us of Cadwalader’s Project Rightsize. Hopefully it will have a happier ending.
More On O’Melveny’s Early Retirement Offers [Legal Pad / Cal Law]
O’Melveny Paying Older Partners to Leave [Legal Pad / Cal Law]

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The O’Melveny & Myers ‘Witch Hunt’: Some Answers from an Employment Law Professor

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O'Melveny Myers LLP logo Above the Law blog.jpgEarlier this month, we passed along a rumor that O’Melveny & Myers was conducting a “witch hunt” for ATL tipsters and commenters. For the record, OMM has denied the rumor (not to us, but at internal meetings).
Back in our prior post, we tossed out this hypothetical:

You’re a lawyer at a major law firm. You provide negative information about your employer to ATL and/or post a comment on ATL (or a similar message board), complaining about the terms and conditions of your employment (e.g., salaries, bonuses, fringe benefits). Your employer finds out what you did, and promptly fires you.

You’re a lawyer — a well-educated, highly-paid professional ($160K+). You are not a member of a union; your office doesn’t have one.

You want to sue your former firm for firing you. Do you have any claim that your conduct was collective activity protected under the NLRA? Might you have any other cause of action, under federal or state law?

We concluded: “Maybe our friends at Workplace Prof Blog can enlighten us?”
And enlighten us they have. One of the blog’s editors, Professor Paul Secunda, kindly sent us a wonderfully detailed analysis. After all the conflicting opinions in the hundreds of comments to our post, it was nice to receive some clarity.
Read Professor Secunda’s response, the model answer to our law school exam hypothetical, after the jump.

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Nationwide Layoff Watch: O’Melveny & Myers ‘Denies Bad Times’

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O'Melveny Myers LLP logo Above the Law blog.jpgWe previously reported on rumors of associate layoffs at O’Melveny & Myers. We’ve conducted some further investigation, and it’s pretty clear to us that OMM is doing more than just performance-based pruning.
We’ll issue a more detailed report sometime soon, perhaps early next week. If you have information to share, please email us (from your home computer, just to be on the safe side; see here).
For the time being, we’ll stick to discussion of what has been reported elsewhere. The firm has never responded to our many requests for comment (and we’re no longer going to bother trying to contact them; guys, you know where to reach us). But OMM did speak earlier this week to TheLawyer.com:

The managing partner of O’Melveny & Myers’ New York office denies that the credit crunch has precipitated the layoffs of up to 15 associates.

O’Melveny tax partner and New York head Brad Okun confirms that a number of associates are leaving, but insists that the exits are all based on individual performance and are a result of O’Melveny’s annual associate appraisal process.

“Every year we re-evaluate our associates and counsel to see how they’re performing,” Okun says. “Every year some fall below our expectations and therefore some are asked to leave. This year is no different from other years.”

One of our OMM sources disagrees: “Complete baloney.”
And a source who spoke to The Lawyer also begs to differ. Read more, after the jump.

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Featured Survey Results: Did You Work on MLK?

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Martin Luther King Jr Day MLK Day On Day Off Above the Law blog.jpgIn last month’s ATL / Lateral Link survey we asked you which holidays you worked on, or expected to work on, during 2007. About half of you reported that you had worked on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Last week, we asked you how you fared this year. Did you take the day off to honor a champion of civil rights, or did you make it a “day on”?
We received just under 1,300 responses, and 44% of you reported that you took the day off. Associates in New York, Los Angeles and Boston were most likely to celebrate the holiday, while associates in Chicago, Atlanta, the Bay Area, and Texas were most likely to be working. (Respondents in the Bay Area were also most likely to work over Christmas and New Year’s. Is it time for them to get New York bonuses?)
How did it break down on a firm by firm basis? DLA Piper, Milbank, Sidley & Austin, Dechert, Hunton & Williams, Jones Day, Latham, Mayer Brown, McDermott, Hughes Hubbard, McGuire Woods, Morgan Lewis, Nixon Peabody, Paul Hastings, and Sullivan & Cromwell each had multiple happy associates who reported that they had taken the day off. Kirkland & Ellis, Baker Botts, Dewey & LeBoeuf, O’Melveny & Myers, Weil, and Winston & Strawn each had mixed responses. Associates at Skadden, however, uniformly reported that they had worked the holiday, as Martin Luther King Jr. day is a “floating” holiday for the firm.
Of those who spent the day at the office, about 54% reported that they weren’t actually asked to work the holiday, but had things they needed to get done. About a quarter reported that their offices were open. Another quarter said that partners told them to work on the holiday. About 8% were asked to work by clients. A surprising number of respondents wrote in that other associates had told them to work on the holiday.
A little over a third of respondents who worked on the holiday thought that the work did not justify the sacrifice.

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Move Over, Greed; Gossip Is Good Too

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Your reading of gossip blogs — well, at least those relating to your profession (so Perez Hilton probably doesn’t count, unless you’re in showbiz) — has just been blessed. From an article entitled “Gossip Is Information By Another Name,” in the New York Times:

Q. The office sometimes feels like one big water cooler, with colleagues gossiping about one another and about management. It’s hard to resist joining in, but it feels subversive to spread information this way. Is it?

A. Not necessarily. Most gossip is just communication, a way that people form networks of trusting relationships.

The word “gossip” has a negative connotation, but you could also call it strategic information sharing, counseling or mentoring, said Michael Morris, a research psychologist and professor of organizational behavior at Columbia Business School who studies social cognition.

So feel free to bill your reading of ATL to “professional development,” “office admin,” or something similar. If you get asked about it, say you were gathering and sharing “strategic information,” or “mentoring” younger lawyers.

As long as the information you’re spreading is not intended to hurt another person, it can actually be good for the company. Especially during times of major change, like downsizing or layoffs, gossip can be cathartic for employees, Professor Morris said.

See, e.g., Friday’s O’Melveny & Myers thread (250+ comments).
A little more discussion, after the jump.

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O’Melveny & Myers Launches ‘Witch Hunt’ for ATL Tipsters?

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O'Melveny Myers LLP logo Above the Law blog.jpgWe respectfully submit that the powers-that-be at O’Melveny & Myers need to “chill” (as Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) recently told former President Bill Clinton).
The folks at OMM apparently have some totalitarian tendencies. We heard they no-offered a summer associate from last year based on this individual’s personal blogging about the summer associate experience (which didn’t even mention the firm by name). And now we hear this rumor (by phone and by email, from multiple sources):

[T]he firm is furious about (true) comments sent to ATL about the firm’s poor performance and underhanded layoffs. Apparently, the fire rages so much so that OMM is dead set on a witch hunt to find the associate(s) who leaked the goings on to ATL.

Both the firm’s tech department and outside techies have been enlisted to figure out which associate’s computer the comments were sent from. OMM associates are now scared to even check your site while at work (though of course are keeping in the loop through home computers).

We contacted the firm for comment. We haven’t heard back from them as of the time of this posting.
We know next to nothing about labor and employment law. But to the labor lawyers among you, here’s a hypothetical:

You’re a lawyer at a major law firm. You provide negative information about your employer to ATL and/or post a comment on ATL (or a similar message board), complaining about the terms and conditions of your employment (e.g., salaries, bonuses, fringe benefits). Your employer finds out what you did, and promptly fires you.

You’re a lawyer — a well-educated, highly-paid professional ($160K+). You are not a member of a union; your office doesn’t have one.

You want to sue your former firm for firing you. Do you have any claim that your conduct was collective activity protected under the NLRA? Might you have any other cause of action, under federal or state law?

Maybe our friends at Workplace Prof Blog can enlighten us. Or if you’re a labor and employment lawyer, feel free to opine in the comments.
P.S. We’re experiencing mysterious technical difficulties this afternoon, so this may be our last post in a while. Maybe OMM is hacking ATL?
Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of O’Melveny & Myers (scroll down)

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Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: Justice Breyer’s Final Hire
(And a Digression on Judges Katzmann and Rakoff)

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Brianne Gorod Justice Stephen Breyer Above the Law blog.jpgWe bring you an addendum to Monday’s post about the latest in Supreme Court clerk hiring. And we’re pleasantly surprised to see that we have this news before Wikipedia.
Recently hired to clerk for Justice Stephen G. Breyer in October Term 2008: Brianne Gorod, currently in the D.C. office of O’Melveny & Myers. Gorod is a 2005 Yale Law grad and a former clerk to the judicial tag team of Jed S. Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.) and Robert A. Katzmann (2d Cir.).
Those who obsessively follows SCOTUS clerk hiring know that Judges Rakoff and Katzmann have jointly sent clerks to the Court before. But contrary to some rumors, they’re not always a “package deal” when it comes to hiring (although there is a significant degree of overlap among their current and former clerks).
Judge Katzmann prefers to hire individuals who have clerked on the district court (or have some other kind of post-law school work experience), so he regularly turns to Judge Rakoff, for whom he has a great deal of respect, as a source of clerkly talent. Judge Katzmann sometimes also helps promising applicants to his own chambers to secure interviews with Judge Rakoff. Conversely, Judge Rakoff also refers and sends clerks to Judge Katzmann, as well as to other Second Circuit judges, and he has also hired some clerks after Second Circuit clerkships. In short, both judges think it’s valuable for people to have both district and circuit clerkship experiences, and they try to help make that happen for their clerks. But they don’t hire 100 percent of their clerks jointly.
The current tally of OT 2008 SCOTUS clerks, with Brianne Gorod added, appears after the jump.

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(And a Digression on Judges Katzmann and Rakoff)”

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Nationwide Layoff Watch: What’s Going On At O’Melveny & Myers?

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O'Melveny Myers LLP logo Above the Law blog.jpgSomething weird, that’s what. We are not prepared to declare associate layoffs (because we try to be cautious about making such calls). But odd things are afoot at OMM, and the environment is one of Kremlin-esque anxiety and paranoia.
We contacted O’Melveny & Myers last week, to see if they had any comment on rumors of associate layoffs. They never got back to us. So this report does not reflect any information provided by the firm itself.
(Other firms that have been the subject of layoff rumors have been more cooperative, opening their kimonos and persuading us of the falsity of the layoff rumors about them. OMM did not avail itself of this opportunity.)
Although O’Melveny had no official comment, we did hear from people who are at OMM or who know people over there. The (admittedly unhelpful) upshot: nobody seems to know what’s going on; the firm is keeping people in the dark.
Read the full report, after the jump.

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Associate Bonus Watch: O’Melveny & Myers Defends Its ‘Below-Market’ Bonuses

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associate bonus watch 2007 law firm Above the Law blog.jpgAs you may recall, the reaction of ATL readers to the bonus announcement of O’Melveny & Myers was decidedly unfavorable. Now the Daily Journal (subscription) — in an article entitled “O’Melveny & Myers’ Below-Market Bonus Disappoints Associates,” by Maya Meinert and Rebecca Cho — has taken notice:

This week’s bonus announcement from Los Angeles-based firm O’Melveny & Myers has caused much dismay among associates in the firm’s California and Washington, D.C., offices – the law blog AboveTheLaw.com’s post on the subject generated more than 200 comments – because the standard bonuses remain unchanged from last year and are well below what is considered “market,” based on New York numbers.

Should other major players in California pay more, O’Melveny could feel the impact among its associate ranks, industry observers said.

According to a memo obtained by AboveTheLaw.com, O’Melveny’s standard bonuses range from $27,500 for first-year associates to $45,000 for those in their seventh year and beyond. The bonuses are tied to a rating system based on the firm’s expectations and a minimum billable-hour requirement of 1,950.

More excerpts and discussion, including the firm’s reaction when contacted by the Daily Journal, appears after the jump.

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Associate Bonus Watch: O’Melveny & Myers (CA and DC)

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associate bonus watch 2007 law firm Above the Law blog.jpgO’Melveny & Myers just announced associate bonuses for its offices in California and Washington, DC. One of the tipsters who sent us the memo is not pleased:

Attached is the memo that O’Melveny & Myers associates just received. The figures for the “class bonus” appear to be far below the standard bonus at other comparable firms such as Gibson Dunn.

Memo after the jump.
Update: Based on the reactions thus far, this announcement is not going over very well. But maybe OMM is okay with that. Opines one commenter: “Expect a big exodus. It’s probably what they are hoping for.”

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