Friday, November 20, 2009 9:01 AM - By Elie Mystal
* Reaction to Full-Cravath’s (f.k.a. Skadden) bonus continues to ripple through the blogosphere. [ABA Journal]
* Details continue to leak out about a merger between Hogan & Hartson and Lovells. Apparently, Ho-Love will retain separate profit pools for the two sets of partners. [The BLT: Blog of the Legal Times]
* Junior Gotti is so close to a mistrial he can feel it. [Daily News]
* Nic Cage got ruined during the financial crisis, according to his estranged business manager. [Courthouse News Service]
* Oprah Winfrey will end her popular talk show in 2011. Notice how I wrote that blurb without using the words “queen,” or “throne.” You’re welcome. [ABC]
With Skadden and Cravath on the same page, the rest of this bonus season might be devoid of any real drama. Associates will take their $7,500 and up and like it.
Skadden’s move here isn’t all that surprising. Last year, the firm doubled the Cravath payment. While that generated a lot of positive press for the firm, evidently good cheer isn’t something that shows up on the partners’ bottom line.
And you know that Cravath has to be happy about this. Now the firm won’t have to look like it paid low bonuses two years in a row.
We should expect the rest of the top firms to fall in line. Now the question turns to firms that are not in the position of Cravath, Skadden, and Cleary. Will they fall into line with the big boys, or might they go even lower?
Then again, how much lower can this bar really go?
After the jump, check out the memo senior associates got from Skadden about their Cravath bonus.
There’s nothing scary about this Halloween edition of the Legal Eagle Wedding Watch. Our featured newlyweds include two Skadden associates, a SCOTUS clerk, and a famous heiress / model / entrepreneur.
Reed E. Hundt, who served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1993 to 1997, will be joining Skadden Arps. He most recently served as a senior advisor on information industries to McKinsey & Company, the elite consulting firm. (For a more detailed description of Reed Hundt’s illustrious career — Yale College ‘69, Yale Law School ‘74, partnership at Latham & Watkins, etc. — see the biography on his personal website.)
Hundt made the announcement this morning at the YLS alumni reunion, where he was serving on a panel on the regulatory process. Professor Thomas Merrill, moderator of the panel, introduced Hundt as a senior adviser to McKinsey. Hundt interjected to note that he’s moving to Skadden — and joked that this was a good opportunity to plug his new practice. He didn’t specify which office he’ll be based out of, but we’re assuming D.C.
It doesn’t seem that the move was public before this morning (at least based on Google News, a search of the Skadden website, and a search of Law.com). But it is now.
Commenters often complain that we feature too many Biglaw associates in this space — uninspiring young people who’ve drifted through college and law school and are now drones at soulless firms. We’re delighted that this week, Biglaw associates make up only one-third of our couples. Rounding out the field are a soulless-drone partner and a former associate who abandoned Biglaw for the classic refuge of the disillusioned JD: law teaching. Enjoy this foray into the unexpected!
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 3:53 PM - By Elie Mystal
Tuesday and Wednesday, offers went out to people who want to participate in Skadden’s summer program. We haven’t heard any solid numbers yet, but so far it appears that prospective summers are satisfied with the results.
No news is good news regarding Skadden. In August, Skadden announced that it would be cutting its summer hiring in half. This morning, Bloomberg News reminded everybody that Skadden will be trying to keep its summer numbers down:
The stark reality of the legal marketplace was illustrated by yesterday’s 2010 job offers by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, the highest-grossing U.S. law firm. It projected a 50 percent cut in summer hiring, said Howard Ellin, the recruiting partner for Skadden. The firm hired 225 students this summer and plans to hire less than half that for summer 2010.
But just because Skadden plans to reduce hiring does not mean the firm intends to reduce its offer rate. If the firm planned this right — and based on the NALP forms it looks like it has — Skadden could have simply invited fewer people to be part of its 2010 summer program. Skadden could still give a robust offer rate to the summers that did commit to the firm.
Hopefully, everything will work out for prospective Skadden summers.
After the jump, Bloomberg has some interesting data on how this year’s fall recruiting is going at a couple of top law schools.
Monday, September 21, 2009 3:37 PM - By Laurie Lin
Supreme Court clerks continue to flood the NYT wedding pages this month, creating grim LEWW odds for mere-mortal Cornell grads and Skadden associates. Like Troy playing Florida or North Texas playing Alabama, these folks are welcome to suit up, but the only question is how bad their whuppin’ is going to hurt.
Here are your three finalist couples for the week:
Sources at Skadden report that Robert S. Bennett, the legendary litigator, will be leaving Skadden for Hogan & Hartson. Skadden partners were informed yesterday; Skadden associates are being told right now.
Bob Bennett is one of the most famous trial lawyers in the world. His client list reads like a CNN promo: Enron, Bill Clinton, Judith Miller, Caspar Weinberger! That’s right, I kicked that list with the Cold War winning, Contra-loving SecDef.
Carl Rauh will also join Bennett at Hogan. Rauh has worked with Bennett on many of his high-profile cases, so that’s of little surprise.
But tipsters report that the two will not be taking any other Skadden - D.C. personnel with them.
Bennett started his private practice at Hogan & Hartson. So the move is a bit of a homecoming.
The associates’ meeting is about to kick off. We hope to have official confirmation from the firm and more news after the associates are informed.
The top brass at Hogan are surely excited about the Bennett acquisition — but might he be to blame for their missing out on the opportunity to meet Sex and the City stars?
Skadden has decided to significantly reduce the size of its summer class for 2010. In a charming move, the firm told the media before informing law schools and prospective summer associates. Am Law Daily reports:
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom is cutting the size of its 2010 summer associate class by half and adjusting its recruitment strategy by making all of its offers on a single day in late September, according to a copy of a letter the firm will send to prospective summers.
Skadden hired 225 summer associates this year and expects to hire a little more than 100 next year, though the precise figure will depend on offer acceptance rates, says Howard Ellin, Skadden’s recruiting partner.
Good news from the letter: the firm plans to make offers to 95 percent of its 2009 summer associates. Of course, as we previously reported, they won’t be starting at the firm until 2011.
We’ll let you know when Skadden officially releases the memo to the people who are affected by the decision.
Correction: From a Skadden spokesperson:
The letter was sent last week to career services and deans at the law schools where Skadden is interviewing. Some schools already have circulated it to their students. We absolutely did not talk to the media before notifying schools.
By way of explanation, your ATL editors were thrown off by the wording of the Am Law report, which described the letter as one that “the firm will send to prospective summers” (emphasis added).
1. Wachtell 2. Cravath 3. Skadden 4. Sullivan & Cromwell 5. Davis Polk
As we noted yesterday, the only change in the top five is Skadden jumping over S&C. Is that fair? A lot of you opined that Skadden’s prestige score was settled before it starting deferring associates. But surprisingly few of you noted that Skadden paid out bonuses that were double what Cravath, S&C, and DPW paid.
Is twice as much bonus money worth one extra spot in the rankings? Vault’s managing editor, Brian Dalton, suggests that Skadden’s bonus carried some weight:
Skadden had a good year, climbing over Sullivan & Cromwell to take the #3 spot. Among other factors, the notion of ‘half-Skadden’ is a potent one, though not quite enough to carry the firm past Cravath. (Mildly ironic in that Cravath’s bonus decision spawned that meme.)
Truly striking is the reach of the Skadden brand: Third in the Boston regional ranking, second in Chicago, and—taking over from Latham—No. 1 in Northern and Southern California. (Vault’s regional rankings are calculated using only the votes of the survey respondents in the particular region.) By contrast, in its hometown of New York City, Skadden places fifth. (These regional rankings are coming soon to the site.)
After the jump, should any of these firms in the top five move over to make room for somebody else?
We’ve provided extensive coverage of a recent Biglaw blind item, concerning an unidentified law firm in Manhattan planning multiple rounds of layoffs for later this year. If you’re tired of this little parlor game, then stop reading here.
But if you enjoy rampant speculation, surf over to Law Shucks, which has crunched the numbers again and generated a new list of likely layoff lairs. Some of the commenters on our last thread may be gratified to see their nominees on the updated list.
At this point, the law firm mentioned in the original Washington Post article should have the decency to come forward and ‘fess up. Is it fair to let your fellow firms sit under a cloud of suspicion?
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.
For the past week, readers, commenters, tipsters, Steven Hawking and the Dalai lama have all been asking me what is going on with Skadden’s NALP form. If you look at the NALP directory of legal employers, you’ll notice that Skadden’s 2009 starting salary is listed as “TBD” — to be determined.
Well we finally have an official answer from the firm. The statement confirms what off-the-record sources and reasonably sane people have been saying all week: Skadden will still be paying $160,000 to first year associates.
After the jump, check out the firm’s salary statement.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009 10:00 AM - By Elie Mystal
Back in March, we reported that two big time Skadden D.C. partners were splitting off from the mothership and forming their own firm. Yesterday, we received word that their new firm, BuckleySandler, made a significant new hire:
After 20 years with General Electric, Stephen Ambrose, Jr., former General Counsel of GE Capital’s consumer finance unit, is joining BuckleySandler, as Partner-in-Charge of the firm’s New York office, effective July 1, 2009. This move coincides with the opening of the firm’s New York office.
G.E., we bring good things to life.
A new New York office run by a finance guy? Are they hiring?
Actually, if I was an unemployed corporate attorney in NYC I wouldn’t wait for an answer to that question. Sending a cold, unsolicited resume to a person you haven’t met can’t really hurt. Not in this market.
A spokesperson for Buckley Sandler had this to say about the importance of the hire:
Steve’s reverse commute will provide the firm with not only an accomplished, well-respected addition but an industry insider with a complete understanding of the financial services landscape and huge sector experience. As Steve notes, “Joining BuckleySandler provides me with a superb opportunity to employ as outside counsel the client-focused service and cost management skills I’ve developed during my career, as well as the chance to practice with my longstanding and highly respected legal colleagues at the firm.”
Oh come on, he’s practically begging to be inundated with resumes from young lawyers who also want a complete understanding of the financial services landscape — and a paycheck.
Check out the full BuckleySandler press release after the jump.
According to the NLJ, despite all the hits the Chicago legal market has taken during this recession, the city is in an expansionary mood:
While law firm expansion has slowed in Chicago during the recession, particularly compared to the accelerated growth in the prior five years, many national firms that set up shop in the city since 2000 are still looking to add lawyers. Efforts to recruit partners with business has been a constant, but firms in the past month have started to look for associates in certain practice areas, including finance, banking, litigation and bankruptcy, said Amy McCormack, who leads the Chicago recruiting firm McCormack Schreiber.
Does that include Kirkland & Ellis? Let’s take a look inside (its new offices), after the jump.
The dreaded swine flu, aka the H1N1 virus, made it to Mayer Brown last week. Will it now work its way up the Am Law 100?
This afternoon, via Fashionista (last paragraph), we learned that swine flu has hit the hallowed halls of Vogue. And we all know who shares a fancy building with Vogue and Conde Nast: Skadden Arps.
In the past, Skadden employees have expressed disappointment over not sharing elevators with Vogue’s glamorous hotties. Perhaps now the Skaddenites are thanking their lucky stars — or wishing they had taken Sidebar.
Lost in yesterday’s Quinn kerfuffle was the fact that Skadden has officially deferred its class of 2010 associates to 2011. That move will help stem the influx of fresh talent into Skadden,
But what about the all of the talent leaving Skadden? Friday, we learned that David Fox and Daniel Wolf were leaving Skadden for Kirkland & Ellis. Today, the word is that restructuring partner D.J. (Jan) Baker is leaving Skadden for Latham & Watkins. AmLaw reports:
The lateral move comes on the heels of two lateral departures from Skadden’s M&A practice reported on Friday — partners David Fox and Daniel Wolf have joined Kirkland & Ellis.
But Skadden executive partner Eric Friedman sees no connection between Baker’s lateral move and that of Fox and Wolf. When asked whether the three departures allude to any larger issues at Skadden, Friedman simply responds, “none whatsoever.”
Anybody in the mood for some positive spin? Let’s take a look at some after the jump.
Summer associates started at Skadden yesterday, and it doesn’t look like the firm hid the ball when it came to talking about market realities. We have news about expected offers and start dates for the class of 2010 — and it’s not even Memorial Day.
At one of the summer associate welcome meetings, summers were told something like “the offers are there, but you have to earn it.” At that point, the collective sphincter-tightening among summers in the room made an audible noise. As one summer puts it:
They said the usual bs about how if they brought us in it’s cuz they wanna offer us, how we’re not competing against each other, there’s room for everyone, etc, But what wasn’t said is as remarkable as what was said. They didn’t point out the 98 percent offer rate the year before, they didn’t even ever explicitly say they expect to give most of us offers. They only said that we’re all eligible to earn an offer based on merit, as every year. The room got VERY quiet and awkward the whole time the guy was speaking, and other partners felt the need to interject with reassurances throughout.
But other sources have told Above the Law that Skadden does plan on making offers commensurate with previous years. The specific “you have to earn it language” was apparently on a PowerPoint slide — the same slide that is shown every year. We’ve heard rumblings that some firms will have summer offer rates of 50% or less, but none of that talk is coming from Skadden. Our understanding is that Skadden fully expects its offer rate to remain unchanged.
So, as long as you can breathe out of your nose instead of your mouth, things should be okay.
But after you get your offer, when can you start? After the jump, we have a clear indication from Skadden.
When the New York Times stands up and takes note of law firm partner defections, you know you are talking about the kinds of people who are capable of making rain in the Kalahari:
David Fox and Daniel E. Wolf, two top partners at the New York law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, have defected to Kirkland & Ellis in a move likely to send shockwaves through the Wall Street legal world.
The loss of Mr. Fox, 51, who was among the highest-paid lawyers at Skadden, is a blow to the firm, where revenue has fallen across nearly all practice areas. A prominent mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer, Mr. Fox is leaving after more than 20 years with the firm, founded in 1948. It is rare for an established firm to lose such a senior lawyer to a less-known rival, and the move is the first time a partner in Skadden’s New York M.& A. practice has jumped to a competitor.
A “less-known rival”: were Kirkland & Ellis attorneys able to hear the compliment over the crack of the back of the NYT hand?
After the jump, the Times makes it sound like Skadden just lost Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom.
Back in March, we reported that Skadden D.C. lost important members of its litigation team when Andrew Sandler and Benjamin Klubes left to start their own firm. Have those losses been replaced? Sources report Skadden is in the process of poaching a big name from O’Melveny & Myers. Apparently, John Beisner is leaving OMM for Skadden, and he’s taking Jessica Miller and Steve Harburg with him.
Beisner is based out of Washington, D.C. and is the chair of O’Melveny’s firmwide Class Actions, Mass Torts, and Aggregated Litigation Practice. A source says this about Mr. Beisner’s importance to O’Melveny:
Beisner’s cases are an unbelievable percentage of the entire litigation portfolio - this has been a huge fear now realized among associates/counsel.
* Reaction to Full-Cravath’s (f.k.a. Skadden) bonus continues to ripple through the blogosphere. [ABA Journal]
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Back in March, we reported that two big time Skadden D.C. partners were 
