Here is a memo that some of you have been waiting for, with an eagerness more typical of teenage boys expecting Spiderman 3. It’s an outline of the associate bonus program for Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, in all of its complex glory.
The memo is rather lengthy. We thought about taking screenshots of each page, but that would have been too time-consuming. So we just cut and pasted the text instead.
Some of the formatting was lost as a result (as well as the pretty green “O” at the top of each page in the original). But the substance of the memo is all there.
If you’re interested, you can check it out after the jump
As noted by several commenters, and as this article in Monday’s Recorder will report, Morrison & Foerster has announced a firm-wide increase in associate base salaries. This follows on the heels of pay raise news from two other California-based (or California-originating) firms, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and O’Melveny & Myers.
Here’s the new MoFo pay scale:
As reflected in the base salary table above, all of MoFo’s offices are now on what might be called a “New York” or “$160K” pay scale. The same is true of O’Melveny, but not of Orrick (which raised starting salaries in its Sacramento and Pacific Northwest offices, but not all the way to $160,000 — just to $145,000).
With respect to the MoFo news, there’s a catch (which the Recorder fails to mention). As noted by this comment:
MOFO eliminated the “contribution bonus” payable upon hitting 1950 [hours]. More or less took the 1950 bonus, which almost everyone earns, plus a few grand more and spread that over a 12 month period. NY lawyers still get bonuses like all other NY attorneys.
MoFo announced that it’s matching OMM and Orrick, but then anounced that it’s rescinding its previously-announced hours-based bonus that kicks in at 1950 hours. The salary increase, pro-rated over 8 months, is essentially of equal value as the now-rescinded bonus. In other words, the only real difference for people meeting their minimum hours requirement is that they get that portion of their bonus up-front. Is OMM or Orrick also playing the “give with one hand while taking with the other” move to “increase” salaries?
We have confirmed, with sources at the firm, the news that O’Melveny & Myers has raised associate base salaries in its California offices. The firm’s California and New York offices are now on the same salary scale.
The O’Melveny & MYers news was conveyed through a firm-wide voice-mail. The message said: “Over the past 24 hours, we’ve detected a movement in the associate and counsel compensation marketplace.”
(The “movement” referred to in the voicemail is presumably the bump in California salaries that was just announced by Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.)
So here’s the new OMM pay scale:
Effective May 1, for all US offices (includes all CA offices and the DC office, and obviously NY):
2006: $160K
2005: $170K
2004: $185K
2003: $210K
2002: $230K
2001: $250K
2000: $265K
1999: $280K
Truth be told, we find the stock options backdating story a little boring. But every now and then, it results in mildly interesting news.
From the Recorder:
A fourth-year associate at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe inadvertently disclosed a sensitive document about stock option backdating that the firm has spent the last five months fighting to keep under seal.
The document — a complaint in a shareholder derivative action against former executives of Mercury Interactive Corp. — contains explosive allegations against the executives and quotes extensively from e-mails in which the executives allegedly discuss backdating their own stock options….
The complaint, Morillo v. Abrams, 1:05-cv-50710, had been filed under seal on Sept. 22 as part of a confidentiality agreement with the executives’ lawyers — but without judicial approval. The Recorder and two other news organizations have been trying since then to unseal the complaint and its supporting exhibits.
But a Dow Jones News Service reporter discovered Friday that Orrick associate M. Todd Scott had inadvertently filed the complaint publicly with a motion to stay the derivative action in October. The Wall Street Journal posted the complaint on its Web site over the weekend and wrote a story about it on page A-4 of Tuesday’s print edition.
Whoops! There goes five months’ worth of legal battles.
Our personal view is that filing under seal is greatly overused, even abused. But if you’re going to file under seal, then file under seal.
(We do feel bad, however, for Mr. Scott. We’re guessing he was operating under inadequate sleep. And when associates are exhausted and overworked, mistakes will get made.) Oops! Orrick Associate Lets Slip Mercury Backdating Document [The Recorder via Law.com]
Here’s the lunchtime open thread for discussion of associate salary developments. In the morning thread, there are rumors about various announcement that allegedly have (or have not) been made. Please send us whatever info you have, so we can verify and post.
After the jump, the Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe announcement, which made the rounds on Friday.
* Last Tuesday, a civil action captioned Aaron Brett Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell LLP was filed in New York Supreme Court — and the world of Biglaw has never been the same ever since. Click here to access the complete archives of our Aaron Charney coverage.
* Of course, Sullivan & Cromwell partners aren’t the only bosses who are jerks challenging (allegedly).
* Don’t forget the Divine Miss C, Shanetta Cutlar, whose delicious reign continues over at the Justice Department’s Special Litigation Section.
Compared to Aaron Charney and Shanetta Cutlar, other topics pale by comparison. But here are other highlights from the past week in legal news:
* Charles “Cully” Stimson apologizes for ranking on Gitmo lawyers.
* In New Orleans, trials get rescheduledfor football.
* Barry Ostrager of Simpson Thacher, the renowned business litigator, has poor bathroom manners (or aim).
* The justices of the Michigan Supreme Court just can’t stop squabbling.
* Now we know the real reason — or rather, the 25 million reasons — that the Dewey Ballantine / Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe merger was scuttled.
* Third Circuit Judge Marjorie Rendell, who also serves as the First Lady of Pennsylvania, sings a duet with Jon Bon Jovi. We don’t know whether to be delighted or frightened.
After the much ballyhooed merger between Dewey Ballantine and Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe fell apart, many theories were bandied about as to why the deal disintegrated. See, e.g., here.
Now, from a British legal publication, The Lawyer, we get this fascinating report:
Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe chairman Ralph Baxter demanded a guaranteed $25m (£12.92m) payout over five years, had the proposed merger with Dewey Ballantine gone through, The Lawyer can reveal.
Orrick’s management drafted an employment agreement for Baxter and Dewey chairman Mort Pierce to sign, which would have committed both partners to the newly merged firm for five years.
Pierce is understood to have refused to sign, prompted by the dissatisfaction of a number of Dewey partners with the terms of the agreement.
The significant remuneration for a non-fee-earning chairman is thought to have contributed to Dewey’s decision to walk away from the merger with Orrick.
Pierce is known to be the highest earner at Dewey, earning an extra $3m (£1.54m) in one year in bonuses alone. But he is also the highest biller, averaging more than 3,000 chargeable hours a year.
Balking at Ralph Baxter’s rich demand is understandable. But in hindsight, one can’t help wonder whether Dewey shouldn’t have just bent over and grabbed its proverbial socks. The DB partners who have walked out the door in the past few weeks probably took with them books of business totalling well over Baxter’s concededly greedy demand.
But the $25 million wasn’t the end of it. Check this out:
For Dewey, the combination of Baxter’s personal demands, which also included unlimited first-class air travel for himself and at least one family member, and the perceived imbalance in terms of post-merger management were the final straw in scuppering a deal that could have produced a $1bn (£514.5m)-turnover firm, which could have been in the global top 10.
Quips an amused tipster: “I laughed when I saw Baxter’s personal demand of unlimited first class travel for him + 1.
Seriously, does he think he’s Gnarls Barkley or what?” Revealed: Baxter killed Dewey-Orrick merger [TheLawyer.com]
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
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Here are this morning’s firms (in Vault 100 order, prestige scores in parentheses):
