Schulte Roth & Zabel really came up with a creative way to make this terrible bonus season even worse for SRZ associates.
Schulte is matching the Cravath scale, but not all at once. Half of the bonus is being paid now, the other half in March. It’s Schulte’s way of issuing a retention bonus without actually spending any extra money.
It also sets Schulte up nicely to avoid paying spring bonuses next year. Not that Schulte management really cares what people think about them. The firm didn’t pay spring bonuses last year. Even though the firm is making people whole with a “spring bonus” payment to those who should have gotten one last spring, the money is still tied to hitting 2011 hours targets.
It’s really one of the most disingenuous bonus memos we’ve seen. While technically the firm is matching Cravath, it’s doing it in a nickle-and-dime way that makes it pretty clear the Schulte partnership begrudges every last cent they have to pay out in bonuses.
If the associates don’t like it, they know where the door is….
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Schulte Roth & Zabel Leaves a Trail of Bonus Crumbs”
* Oooh, Obama drama at the White House! They’re fighting with Congress over the legal definition of war “hostilities.” Can’t we all just celebrate good Obama (come on)? [New York Times]
* Schulte Roth’s tech-support crew would love nothing better than to blue screen the entire firm, but instead, they’re suing for overtime pay. [Thomson Reuters]
* At this point, it’s a shame that Charlie Sheen didn’t try to trademark “LOSING.” It looks like the actor won’t get his day in court after all. [Company Town / Los Angeles Times]
* Given my obsession with Lady Gaga, there was no way I was going to leave out this story about “Lawyer Gaga” and her role in the Casey Anthony trial. [WESH Orlando]
* It may be a bad sign for your case when the judge’s name is Thrash. How will Georgia’s tough new immigration law fare against this scary-sounding member of the judiciary? [Forbes]
* This is actually a bit of a surprise because it comes from the land of Jewish grandmas. A middle school in Florida is being sued by the ACLU over “Kick-a-Jew Day.” [Marco Eagle]
* With a motion critiquing opposing counsel’s grasp of the use of apostrophes, Richard Crites’s pleading is a potential candidate for Motion of the Day for sure. [Springfield News-Leader]
The funny thing about spring bonuses is that nobody really planned on them. Firms really thought they were going to be able to get through bonus season paying Cravath’s lowball initial bonuses. Remember when Cravath seemingly set the market, and there was that one partner caught saying “thank God”? That’s what firms were thinking.
Well, spring bonuses have been with us for some time now, and most firms that are going to pay them have announced. Still, there are some firms that seem to be trying to figure out how to delay or avoid paying market compensation for as long as possible.
Schulte Roth is in that category. They’ll be paying spring bonuses, but only if you hit various 2010 and 2011 hours requirements.
And so while Schulte can say that it is “matching” the Cravath scale for spring bonuses, it seems like there are a lot of Schulte people who will not be seeing a single spring bonus dollar. These are the kinds of things that happen when firms are caught off guard by market forces…
Continue reading “Associate Bonus Watch: Schulte Will Pay Spring Bonuses, But You’ll Need To Jump Through Some Hoops First”
We’ve been trying to figure out how many top New York firms will adopt spring bonuses. It doesn’t appear that Schulte Roth & Zabel will be one of them.
Multiple tipsters report Schulte Roth conducted staff layoffs earlier this week.
But maybe we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that this means Schulte will not be paying spring bonuses. Is it possible that this move will free up money for a spring payout?
Continue reading “Staff Layoff Watch: Schulte Roth Has A Different Kind of Spring Surprise”
With fall recruiting gearing up, and the lateral market warming up, we continue our annual series of open threads about the law firms featured in the Vault prestige rankings. These threads provide ATL readers with a forum to discuss the different firms and their various strengths and weaknesses.
The end of the Vault 100 is in sight. We’re covering the firms in batches of 20 now. Here are the firms ranked #61 to #80, which will provide today’s discussion fodder:
61. Greenberg Traurig, LLP
62. Holland & Knight LLP
63. Fish & Richardson P.C.
64. Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP
65. Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP
66. Foley & Lardner LLP
67. Perkins Coie LLP
68. Nixon Peabody LLP
69. Patton Boggs LLP
70. Kaye Scholer LLP
71. Hunton & Williams LLP
72. Reed Smith LLP
73. Steptoe & Johnson LLP
74. Chadbourne & Parke LLP
75. Howrey LLP
76. Bryan Cave LLP
77. Lovells (US) [now part of Hogan Lovells]
78. Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP
79. Crowell & Moring LLP
80. Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP
This is a very eclectic group, including a few New York-centric firms, some D.C.-dominated places, and a bunch of national and even international giants.
Let’s take a closer look at some of these shops….
Continue reading “Fall Recruiting Open Threads: Vault 61 – 80 (2011)”
This summer is not as thrilling for law students as summers past. Firms have tightened their belts, and the law students lucky enough to snag one of the few summer associate positions out there are not getting the royal treatment. Or they are, but now the royal treatment is defined as allowing summers to order anything they want off the McDonald’s Dollar Menu (“All the McChickens and baked apple pies you can eat, 3Ls! But get it to go. There’s work to be done.”).
The Philadelphia Inquirer laments the decline of the summer associate experience:
The programs themselves, with trips abroad and lavish entertaining, could seem more like summer enrichment for precocious college students than real employment. But as a general rule, that sort of treatment is a thing of the past.
More typical is the summer program at the Wilmington office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom L.L.P., where Temple second-year Nick Mozal is spending his summer in corporate law. Mozal said there has been some entertaining, but the big event so far has been a night at a Phillies game.
Well, it is Wilmington. Are there better options than that?
But even in much more glamorous Philadelphia, the summer experience is lackluster:
James Lawlor, a Reed Smith partner who recruits and hires summer associates, said the firm has been doing less entertaining of summer associates, and when it does, it is more likely to schedule events at the firm’s Center City offices rather than at costly restaurants.
“We took away some of the bells and whistles,” Lawlor said.
Not all firms have silenced their bells and thrown out their whistles, though. After the jump, check out this year’s contenders for best summer associate event. And vote for the firm that should take home the shorter and smaller prize…
Continue reading “ATL Summer Associate Event Contest: The Finalists”
Most New York lawyer types have given up on the idea of cooking for themselves; they’re far more likely to get their dinner from Seamless Web than from their own fridge and stovetop. But not Serena Palumbo. She’s now in-house counsel for an Italian bank, and has persevered in making nightly home-made dinners, despite prior stints at Schulte Roth and Shearman & Sterling.
And her perseverance has led to a possible career opportunity: TV celebrity chef. She’s one of the competitors in The Next Food Network Star, a Bobby Flay and Giada de Laurentiis-hosted reality competition, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Palumbo looks great in photos, but a former colleague who caught the premiere told us she struggled a bit in the first episode:
Wolfgang Puck told Giada that the Food Network might have to make room for a new Italian princess.
She did a good job with the food but struggled in front of the camera; she came across a bit forced so she’s not a front-runner but can probably turn things around.
Curses. Corporate lawyers don’t get to spend time in a courtroom, practicing their TV face in front of a jury.
We caught up with Serena by phone this week and asked her how she got onto the show, and more importantly, how she finds time to cook dinner every night at home in Manhattan…
Continue reading “Can In-House Counsel Serena Palumbo Be The Next Food Network Star?”
The “pro bono year” is to Biglaw what a “study abroad program” is to most American universities: a time for reflection, exposure to new things, and a more relaxed pace.
It was a necessity born of the recession. Firms did not have enough work to go around; they didn’t want to lose perfectly good employees, but they also did not want to pay them six figures to sit in their offices, twiddling their thumbs until the economy picked back up. So, instead, they offered five-figure stipends and the requirement, in some cases, that their lawyers go off and serve the public good.
This fall, many of those lawyers are heading back to their firms (though some liked being “abroad” in the public interest sector so much that they don’t plan to go back). Skadden is still trying to decide how much worth the pro bono year, or “Sidebar Plus” in Skadden parlance, brought to its associates, and thus how much to pay them upon their return.
It seems though that Skadden is unsure about the worth of Sidebar itself. Though the firm has not officially commented on it, we understand that it is discontinuing the Sidebar Plus program, apparently because work at the firm has picked up and it wants all of its associates back at the farm, plowing the billable hour fields.
What will become of the “pro bono year” for Biglaw? When we emerge from the recession, will it be left behind? Heading into the fall, some firms are still offering the year-away option to incoming associates, including generous stipends…
Continue reading “How Many Firms Will Continue To Pay For A Pro Bono Year?”
Most Biglaw New York lawyers would die of malnutrition without SeamlessWeb. Malnutrition, people! Because nobody has time to run down 50 floors to grab a bite to eat after hours.
Given the recession, charging 6:30 steak dinners to clients is no longer cool. But Schulte Roth & Zabel could be taking its anti-Seamless policy a bit too far. Here’s the email Schulte attorneys received last night:
The Firm cafeteria goes to great lengths to provide menu choices that reflect your preferences, and we are constantly looking for new ways to improve those offerings and keep the cafeteria operating as efficiently as possible. Attorneys and legal assistants working in the office on a client-related matter past 7:30 p.m. are encouraged to patronize Café 23, which is open for dinner Monday through Thursday evenings from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. Beginning April 5th, 2010, you will not be able to place orders through SeamlessWeb until 8:30 p.m. on weekday evenings.
We recognize that this change will cause some of you to rethink your dining options and, to that end, we ask you to let us know what types of food you would like the cafeteria to provide at dinnertime and then give Café 23 a try. Please email your comments and suggestions to [Redacted], Director of Food Services. Thank you.
Screwing around with SeamlessWeb is one sure way to piss off everybody that works for you. And boy are Schulte associates pissed …
Continue reading “Schulte Nixes Seamless Before 8:30″
In November, we reported that Schulte was letting people go. We noted that Schulte decided to lay people off before the holidays.
Now it appears that Schulte wasn’t exactly being a total Scrooge. It looks like Schulte let people know they were going to be fired back in November, but those layoffs become official this Friday.
Well, at least people were still able to draw a paycheck through the holidays. I imagine the holiday season unemployment line is one of the most depressing places on earth.
In November, we reported that 13 people had been let go. Now that people are actually set to leave the office, that number has gone up.
Details after the jump.
Continue reading “Nationwide Layoff Watch: Schulte’s November Layoffs Become Official”
The Above the Law inbox has been on fire all morning as disgruntled (former) Schulte Roth & Zabel associates share some bad news:
Yet more lay-offs: Two groups — 13 associates so far — real estate and business transactions.
Other tipsters have used the same ominous language: “13 associates, so far.” Are there more people that are going to get the bad news from Schulte today? The firm did not respond to our request for comment, so we suppose other Schulte associates will just have to wait and see.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before we worry about how many more pink slips might be handed out today, let’s take a moment to look at the 13 we know of that have already been let go.
Continue reading “Nationwide Layoff Watch: Schulte Gets Things Done Before the Holidays”
In these difficult times for the legal profession, it’s more important than ever to know all your options. So we resume our series on career alternatives for attorneys — jobs for J.D. holders that don’t involve working as a Biglaw associate or contract attorney.
In a prior post, we discussed the career alternative of entrepreneurship. If you’re tired of working for a boss, then become the boss: start your own company.
Today we focus on two lawyers who, interestingly enough, have started their own businesses in the same area: admissions consulting and academic coaching. Perhaps this is the start of a hot new trend? Cf. the cupcake craze sweeping the nation, which another lawyer is capitalizing on.
Adam Nguyen, formerly of Paul Weiss and Shearman & Sterling, is the president and CEO of Ivy Link. Jon Palmer, formerly of Schulte Roth & Zabel, is the president and founder of The Admissions Experts.
Both businesses are headquartered in New York — which makes sense, given how obsessive Manhattan parents can be about getting their offspring into elite educational institutions. NYC ≠ TTT!!!
Read more about these gents and their new enterprises, after the jump.
Continue reading “Career Alternatives for Attorneys: Admissions Consulting and Academic Coaching”
Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks. Law Shucks has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.
For a while there it would look like the first consecutive weeks without layoffs since this time last year (by our reckoning, you have to go back to the weeks ending October 9 and October 2, 2008). Alas, one firm did come through with staff layoffs, about which more after the jump.
As usual, we begin with the US macroeconomic picture, and as usual, it ain’t pretty. For the week, the S&P 500 was down about 2%. That was the second straight week of losses, and the DJIA had its biggest weekly decline in three months. 263,000 net jobs were lost in September and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, despite perhaps the technical end of the recession. As with the stock market, bad results are one thing, but results worse than expectations are another, and that was the case here. Consensus estimates were net losses of 175,000, so the actual results were way short. August’s revised numbers were slightly better than original reports, though.
The poor results are creating pessimism around when things will start to turn around:
[T]he report also buttressed fears that economic expansion would be weak and hesitant, with scarce paychecks and economic anxiety remaining prominent features of American life well into next year.
“This is a weak report,” said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh. “The rate of job loss has tapered off, but we still haven’t reached the point where businesses are willing to hire.”
Could this create political difficulties for the president?
Continue reading “This Week In Layoffs: 10.04.09″
Just the other day, we told you that things were looking pretty good for 2Ls who want to be part of Schulte Roth & Zabel’s 2010 summer program.
That positive report is of no consolation to participants in Schulte’s 2009 summer program. It looks like those kids had the bad fortune of going to law school a year too early. Their summer program was only eight weeks long, and yesterday Schulte finally got around to making offers. A tipster reports:
We’re all talking. Seems like Schulte was about 2/3rds [offer rate] or so … We had a listserv of everyone. Seems like a ton of no offers. They did no offers first.
The two-thirds of Schulte summers who received offers were not given a start date. But the benefit of having a listserv is that they are still pretty excited to have offers in comparison to their colleagues that were rejected by the firm.
Schulte declined to comment for this story. But we understand that it is full steam ahead for summer 2010.
Earlier: Schulte Roth Feeling Good About 2011
A tipster pointed us in the direction of Schulte Roth & Zabel’s Frequently Asked Questions page for its 2010 summer program. While other firms are canceling their 2010 summer programs entirely, Schulte seems quite optimistic about its summer program. Check out the firm’s answers to three key questions every 2L is wondering about:
Will you hire more summer associates than you expect to be able to make offers to?
We will hire the number of summer associates we want for our fall class starting in the fall of 2011.
What is your summer associate salary?
In 2009 summer our summer associates were paid a weekly salary of $3,077. The salary is based on the first-year associate annual salary of $160,000.
How many weeks will your 2010 Summer Program be?
Our 2010 summer program will be 11 weeks.
The 2009 summer program at Schulte was only eight weeks long. But the firm is already committing to an 11 week summer program for 2010. And at the firm is sticking to the $160K payscale, and it’s planning on making full offers.
Schulte Roth is ranked #77 on the most recent Vault list. Arent Fox — the firm that just revoked offers to a number of its incoming associates — is ranked #76.
People sitting on a summer offer from Schulte have to feel pretty good right now.
Earlier: Fall Recruiting Open Thread: Vault 71 – 80 (2010)
We continue our slog push through the nation’s 100 top law firms, as ranked by our friends over at Vault. Here are the next ten firms, to be discussed in the comments to this post:
71. Reed Smith
72. Bryan Cave
73. Perkins Coie
74. Hunton & Williams
75. Patton Boggs
76. Arent Fox
77. Schulte Roth & Zabel
78. Howrey
79. Chadbourne & Parke
80. Crowell & Moring
Assorted observations about these firms, after the jump.
Continue reading “Fall Recruiting Open Thread: Vault 71 – 80 (2010)”
On Monday, we tossed out a blind item about future layoffs at a Manhattan law firm, mentioned in the Washington Post as a client of the Five O’Clock Club, an outplacement firm. On Tuesday, with the help of Law Shucks, we narrowed down the list of suspects.
We’re happy to report that we can advance the ball on this. Three firms should be cleared of suspicion:
1. Dewey & LeBoeuf: A spokesperson from D&L stated that it is not the firm in question and has no layoff plans.
2. Schulte Roth & Zabel: A spokesperson from SRZ stated that it is not the firm in question and has not hired a layoff consultant or outplacement consultant.
3. White & Case: A reader pointed out to us that White & Case is listed as a Five O’Clock Club client (PDF). [Update: Looks like the client list has been removed, but we downloaded it; check it out here.]
This caused us to wonder if White & Case might be the firm at issue. But White & Case denies it.
Continue reading “Blind Item Follow-Up: Denials of Upcoming Layoffs from Dewey, Schulte, and White & Case”
The Above the Law tips line achieved a critical mass of Schulte Roth chatter after a summer associate meeting at the firm yesterday. We’ve contacted various parties who were at the meeting and the firm itself. Here is what went down.
Over the course of the meeting Jeffrey A. Lenobel, a member of the firm’s executive committee, told summer associates that offers would not be extended at the end of the summer program. Schulte traditionally makes offers to people on their last day at the firm — and this year the firm’s summer program ends this Friday. Lenobel told associates that Schulte would be making a decision on how many offers to extend at a later date, but some summers took that as an indication that Schulte would not be extending any offers.
When we spoke to Mr. Lenobel, he assured us that some summers got the wrong idea:
Of course we’ll be making offers. We just don’t know when we will and how many we’ll be making.
But will those offers be for 2010, or will Schulte join the ranks of firms that are deferring associates to 2011? More details from Lenobel after the jump.
Continue reading “Schulte Summers: Try To Chill Out and Work The Problem”
Maybe work is booming at Schulte Roth & Zabel? The firm is changing its vacation policy to make it more stringent. Could it be that the firm wants all hands on deck? A tipster reports the major changes:
* Personal days are now limited to 5 per year (there was previously no limit). Any days in excess of 5 count as vacation.
* SRZ previously reimbursed attorneys for nonrefundable costs associated with vacations that the firm cancelled due to work obligations. The new policy states that reimbursement will now be considered on a case-by-case basis.
* Weekend trips will only be reimbursed when the firm requires them to be cancelled if the trip has been previously approved by the partner appointed to approve vacations. The firm previously did not require attorneys to request approval for weekend trips.
Another tipster quips:
Schulte Tries Increasing Egg Production by Choking the Chicken
But it could also be that Schulte’s new vacation policy has an eye towards layoffs.
Read more, after the jump.
Continue reading “The New Schulte Vacation Policy”
According to the just released AmLaw 100 numbers, Schulte Roth & Zabel ranks 10th in terms of profits per partner. The average take home for partners was $2,290,000 in 2008.
But that might not stop Schulte from cutting associate salaries.
There hasn’t been any official announcement. But according to multiple sources now, the memo is in the system. According to one of our sources:
If you search on the document system, there is a memo in there. It’s titled “Associate Salary Reduction” or something. … I haven’t clicked on it, but it seems self-explanatory.
Another tipster explained to us that nobody has clicked on the actual document. Schulte can see who opens which documents on the firm system, and nobody wants the firm to know that they looked at the internal memo.
More details after the jump.
Continue reading “Schulte Salary Cuts are In the System”
