This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but the National Law Journal reports that partners are successfully hanging onto their jobs despite this recession.

Associates and “other attorneys” are not:

Law firms since 2005 had increased the number of “other” attorneys — a category comprising counsel, of counsel, senior counsel and staff attorneys — to help handle boom-time business.

But in 2009, they cut about 10% of those attorneys, for a loss of 1,113 lawyers. By comparison, NLJ 250 firms shed 8.7% of associates in 2009. This year, 46 “other” attorneys worked at the average NLJ 250 firm, compared to 50 the year before.

Yeah, it is not a good time to be an expensive senior counsel or of counsel that doesn’t bring in business. On the bright side, at least senior attorneys and counsel have a career track record they can market if they have been laid off.

Staff attorneys cannot say the same thing. Their troubles have been well documented. Staff attorney programs getting pinched because of the recession generally. And the increased reliance on outsourcing is a double whammy to staff attorney job security.

But after the jump, the NLJ reports that partners appear to be safe.

One casualty of the economic recession could well be the position of “staff attorney.” We’ve reported that Skadden and Covington & Burling have had major cuts to their staff attorney programs. Above the Law is now able to report that similar reductions have happened at Paul Weiss. Sources report that at least a dozen staff attorneys have been let go by Paul Weiss over the past couple of months.

UPDATE: We are now hearing reports that the number is significantly higher than a dozen, perhaps as high as 45 (since November 2008). “This can all be confirmed by the lawyer lists that are sent out at the start of each month,” said our source.

A tipster puts it this way:

PW has sneakily let go [a number of] staff attorneys. There have been … cuts in the past few months and it is getting more steady and consistent in the last few weeks. They are letting a few people go every week. It is so ridiculous that they haven’t told anyone what’s really going on and everyone is just waiting around for the call.

Apparently they need to cut all the staff attorneys so they have some work for 80 or so first years that just started who are already doing nothing but doc review and who should expect to be doing nothing but doc review for the foreseeable future. Some of these staff attorneys have been there for seven and eight years and they are not even offering severance. They say it has nothing to do with performance but are letting some of the good people go first.

Paul Weiss declined to comment for this story. But we understand that no associates have been let go.

Are junior associates the new “staff attorney”? More from our tipsters after the jump.

Yolanda Young is back with a vengeance, and an amended complaint against Covington & Burling.

The brief synopsis on Young is that she was a Covington & Burling staff attorney who sued the firm for racial discrimination. Covington has denied the charges at every point. The firm briefly got the suit tossed, but it was reinstated.

Young’s basic allegations remain the same:

Through its pattern and practice, Defendant, Covington & Burling LLP, systematically relegates its black attorneys to its lowest rung of practicing attorneys — the position of staff attorney. Firm policy bans the promotion of staff attorneys to the position of associate and, ultimately, to partner. This prohibition adversely impacts Defendant’s black attorneys by consigning the majority to earning less money, performing less challenging work, and enjoying less opportunity for professional growth than Defendant’s nonblack attorneys.

This time around, Young argues that black staff attorneys at Covington are more qualified than their white colleagues:

Young points out that while Covington uses a combination of law school grades, journal membership, and clerkship experience to determine the assignment of its attorneys, many of their partners — who decide how an attorney should be assigned — lack such credentials, but presumably are able to perform adequately at partner-level.

Young also asserts that black practicing attorneys, as a group, typically graduated from higher ranked law schools than their white colleagues and that, more often than their white counterparts, black staff attorneys attended law schools from which Covington’s partners, counsel, and associates graduated.

I think I know what is going on here. See, this is a revenge fantasy lawsuit. And Covington has been typecast in the role of Major King Kong.

After the jump, Young brings charts to back up her claims, and announces her full intentions exclusively to Above the Law.

In March, we reported that Skadden was essentially canceling its staff attorney program. We reported:

Only staff attorneys that were “integral” to ongoing matters have been kept on. And there is no word on whether those people will have any job security after their matters wrap up.

It appears that Covington & Burling is also undergoing a major reduction of its staff attorney program.

Tipsters (including some recently laid off staff attorneys) report that firm management has decided to effectively discontinue its staff attorney program. The firm has been letting go of staff attorneys at the rate of a couple per week over the last few weeks. As we understand it, as staff attorneys finish up their active matters, they are being let go.

Our sources tell us that the decision was made by firm management some weeks back. At the time the decision was made, the staff attorney manager was out of the office on vacation. When she came back, she allegedly told Covington’s staff attorneys that they should start circulating their resumes.

In some cases, laid off staff attorneys are being given a one week severance option. One week, if they sign a form promising not to sue the firm over the circumstances of their termination. Some Covington personnel that spoke to Above the Law believed that clause is proof that Covington decided to move out staff attorneys as a response to the lawsuit filed by former-Covington Staff Attorney Yolanda Young.

After the jump, we have statements from Covington & Burling, and Yolanda Young.

Like many of you, we’ve heard the rumors about significant staffing cuts at Skadden all week. We now understand that all of the affected individuals have been informed, and we can now appreciate the scope of Skadden’s actions. Here is the bad news for Skadden staff:

* We understand that over 50 legal support staffers have been let go from the firm.

* In addition to those support staffers, the staff attorney program at Skadden has been greatly reduced. Only staff attorneys that were “integral” to ongoing matters have been kept on. And there is no word on whether those people will have any job security after their matters wrap up.

* The cuts were spread across all of Skadden’s U.S. offices, but at this point international offices remain unscathed.

* No associates were let go.

At some level, staffing cuts at Skadden are not surprising. Last week, we reported that two major Skadden DC partners were leaving the firm. We now understand that they took ten associates with them. We understand that associates participation in the Sidebar program has been very strong. It is a bit too early to tell what the final numbers will be for participation in that program, but our sources report that one of the reasons for the strong early numbers is that Skadden partners are using their contacts to find objectively interesting public service opportunities.

Still, fewer attorneys was bound to lead to fewer staff.

Of course, that doesn’t mean laid off staff are happy with the situation.

Remember when being a staff attorney was a viable option in the Biglaw universe? As we have previously reported, many big firms are laying off their staff attorneys. Today, Dechert adds its name to that growing trend.

Within the past few hours, we received a number of tips about staff attorney layoffs at Dechert.

Our sources tell us that Dechert will lay off 10 staff attorneys today. The number accounts for about 1/4th of the firm’s total staff attorney force.

Dechert laid off 19 attorneys two weeks ago, and 72 staffers back in December. So this news should not be particularly surprising.

But it is another indication that the economic crisis is taking a toll on all types of Biglaw employment.

Good luck to the 10 staff attorneys leaving Dechert.

Earlier: Staff Layoff Watch: A Roundup
Nationwide Layoff Watch: Dechert Cuts 19
Dechert Ices 72 Staff Positions

A lot of pain has been dealt out to support staff at various law firms recently.

On Friday, Akin Gump slashed their support staff, laying off 65 employees. The WSJ Law Blog reported:

“There are no planned attorney layoffs,” said [Sheila Turner, a firm spokeswoman]. “But in these difficult times we of course expect to monitor the economy and staff the firm accordingly.”

Is the promise that Akin Gump won’t fire attorneys something that people can rely on? Don’t forget that Akin Gump is one of the few firms that admitted to rescinding offers to summer associates.

Meanwhile, in Indianapolis, the firm Ice Miller is making a two percent reduction in their workforce. Indiana Lawyer Daily reports:

“Over the last few months, we have been engaged in a thorough review of all aspects of our business operations in an effort to increase efficiencies and productivity to better serve our clients,” [Chief managing partner Byron Myers] said in the statement. “As a result of that review, we determined that we could consolidate some of our internal processes which resulted in much more efficient staffing requirements.”

This is the third firm in the past two months to cut support and administrative positions. Bose McKinney & Evans cut 11 support positions Jan. 9, almost 8 percent of its operational staff. It was a move that didn’t involve any attorneys but was something that law firm leaders said was necessary because of the economy.

Skadden joins the party after the jump.

Earlier today we reported that Squire, Sanders & Dempsey extended offers to 76% of their summer class, but that an untold number of those summers received staff attorney offers.

Well, after an initial “no comment” on the staff attorney question, Squire Sanders decided to clarify their statement:

The firm made one staff attorney offer. The offer was extended to accommodate a law student’s interest in a practice area that was only hiring staff attorneys for 2009. We did not include the staff attorney offer when we reported to you that 76% of the summer associates received associate offers. We intend to report associate offer numbers to NALP excluding the staff attorney offer as well.

There you go. At least the 24% of the class that was no-offered do not have to feel as bad about themselves as some commenters suggested.

I guess I can stop screaming at NALP about the purity of their report.

Earlier: Nationwide No Offer Watch: Squire Sanders

The no-offer reports keep rolling in from our readers, but one tip about Squire, Sanders & Dempsey stopped us in our tracks:

[A summer associate] at Squire Sanders got offered a staff attorney position. Apparently one-third of the class got real offers, some got staff attorney offers, and the rest?

Staff attorney — i.e., a job with a significantly lower salary than an associate position, featuring endless document review and discovery work, and without any prospect of promotion to partnership. Is that a cold offer, or a coldcock?

Or is it “creative accounting” for purposes of reporting to NALP, which collects and publishes data about summer associate programs? Presumably Squire Sanders will count the staff attorney “offers” in the number of full-time employment offers made to summer associates that it reports to NALP. But bringing the summers on as staff attorneys rather than associates will save the firm a lot of money. This is one of the most creative ways of dealing with the downturn that we’ve come across.

Squire Sanders spokesperson Drez Jennings provided us with a prompt and direct response:

[W]e made offers to 76 percent of the summers, and no offers to 24 percent.

Ouch. No-offering a quarter of your class is already pretty harsh.

Jennings declined to comment on the staff attorney question (even though it was explicitly presented), leaving ATL readers to speculate on how many, if any, of Squire Sanders summer offers were for staff attorney positions.

More on Squire Sanders and staff attorneys, after the jump.

A staff attorney reader of ATL once described his position as “either the bluest white-collar job, or the whitest blue-collar job.” We found the description quite apt, based on what we know about being a staff attorney.

For those of you who are not familiar with them, staff attorneys perform work similar to contract attorneys — e.g., document review, document production, other discovery-related tasks — but, unlike contract attorneys, they are “on staff” at their specific firms (hence the title of staff attorney). They don’t have to worry, like contract attorneys, about what their next gig will be, since they are employed directly by their Biglaw shops (i.e., not placed through an agency). Staff attorneys have stable jobs, good benefits, and reasonable hours (at least most of the time; they may have to work overtime if a case is busy).

But there are also disadvantages to being a staff attorney. All that document work can be monotonous, even mind-numbing. Unlike associates, staff attorneys are not on the track towards partnership. They are often the first to be let go during downturns (e.g., at Milbank Tweed; see here and here).

Some staff attorneys claim they are treated like second-class citizens. Back in March, over at the Huffington Post, Yolanda Young — a former staff attorney at Covington & Burling — decried what she described as the firm’s “staff attorney ghetto,” noting the high proportion of minorities among the staff attorney ranks (and the low percentage of minorities among the ranks of partnership-track associates).

If it is a “ghetto,” however, it’s a rather well-paid one. From one tipster:

I’m a Paul Weiss staff attorney. [ATL] has a loyal following among us.

I’d be interested in seeing a post on SA salaries. I wonder how much they differ from firm to firm here in NYC, or in other cities.

I’m sure such a post would get hammered with comments from BigLaw associates. But it would be widely read, and interesting to the growing ranks of the staff attorney underclass.

We’re happy to oblige. Here is the requested post.

Find out how much Paul Weiss pays its staff attorneys in New York — and, if you’re a staff attorney at another firm or in another city, dish about how much you make — after the jump.

On Tuesday, we wrote about staff attorney layoffs at Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy. As a commenter on our post noted, yesterday the firm sent around an email disputing our account:

From: David R. Gelfand
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 3:20 PM
To: #Litigation Non Partner Attorneys US; #Litigation Partners US
Cc: Sikora, Michael; Green, Valerie
Subject: Discovery Attorney Program

Several of you have asked about rumors that we have disbanded our Discovery Attorney Program. The rumors are absolutely not true.

If you need assistance from our Discovery Attorneys, please contact [xxxx].

Thanks.

David

We would have appreciated it if Milbank had responded to the multiple inquiries we made of them prior to running the post, instead of responding indirectly and after-the-fact. But it’s not the first time we’ve seen passive-aggressive behavior on the part of a law firm.

(We often reach out to law firms about rumors we hear — and we often kill stories when firms explain how and why they’re inaccurate. This happens almost every day around here. But if firms don’t avail themselves of the opportunity to comment on a reasonably credible rumor, then we view it as fair game.)

Anyway, we ran David Gelfand’s email by our original source, who responded:

“Milbank let go of all of the permanent discovery attorneys except for two. They kept on temporary discovery attorneys — those who are working through staffing agencies and not on Milbank’s payroll.”

“Notice in Milbank’s response [how they say] they did not dissolve the Discovery Attorney Program. That’s very different from saying that they did not fire all or nearly all of the attorneys in that program.”

Our earlier report, in stating that all the permanent discovery attorneys were laid off, was erroneous, since two were spared. We regret the error (and have appended a correction to the original post).

Could this latest report be erroneous as well? Quite possibly; we’re honest about our fallibility. But we once again reached out to Milbank, yesterday and today, and neither David Gelfand nor a firm spokesperson responded to our inquiries.

If you have knowledge of what’s really going on over there, feel free to drop us a line. Thanks.

Earlier: Nationwide Layoff Watch: Milbank Cans Staff Attorneys

Sorry we’re late to the party on this HuffPo post, bearing the provocative title “Law Firm Segregation Reminiscent of Jim Crow.” It’s by Yolanda Young, a former staff attorney at Covington & Burling. Her claim, in a nutshell, is that Covington fills the ranks of its “staff attorney ghetto” with African-Americans, while the ranks of its partnership and partnership-track associate pool are overwhelmingly white.

Young’s post has already been discussed at Legal Blog Watch and the WSJ Law Blog. But considering how we love to fan flames of racial tension follow the issue of diversity in the legal profession so closely here at ATL, of course we’re going to cover it.

Here’s an excerpt (emphases added):

Blacks at Covington comprise less than 5% of the Washington office’s partners and associates, but make up 30% of its staff attorneys. A peek at the firm’s website doesn’t reveal this since, unlike all other lawyers there, staff attorneys aren’t pictured. Were they, a peculiar pattern would emerge…..

Covington’s black staff attorneys (like its black partners and associates) hail from top law schools like Harvard, Duke and Georgetown while several white associates and partners attended schools like Catholic, Kentucky and Villanova (all ranked well below 50). Taken as a whole, the black staff attorneys’ average law school rank is higher than that of white staff attorneys at the firm.

Blacks bought into the notion, stressed by legal literature, ranking systems and law firm recruiting departments, that investing in a top legal education is paramount for those wishing to work at top law firms. It’s disheartening to then discover that the black student who borrows $120,000 to attend Georgetown will only earn half that of the white associate who’s paid $60,000 to attend the University of Maryland.

Covington began stockpiling its staff attorney ghetto with blacks and other minorities in 2005, shortly after the General Council [sic] of some of the country’s largest companies joined Roderick A. Palmore, Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary of Sara Lee in taking a tougher stance on law firm diversity. Signed by hundreds of General Counsel, this new “Call to Action” states they will retain firms that demonstrate a level of diversity reflective of their employees and customers and end their relationship with firms “whose performance consistently evidences a lack of meaningful interest in being diverse.”

Covington has certainly diversified its firm; however, its attorneys are far from equals. The vast majority of Covington’s black attorneys do no substantive work, have no control over their case assignments and no opportunity for advancement. This seems to be just the sort of structure the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warned against in its 2003 “Diversity In Law Firms” report which stated, “In large, national law firms, the most pressing issues have probably shifted from hiring and initial access to problems concerning the terms and conditions of employment, especially promotion to partnership.”

You can read the rest of the post — it’s quite lengthy — over here.

What explains our delay? We were doing the MSM thing of waiting to hear back from Covington before posting (instead of just going ahead and writing about it, which would have been the more bloggy thing to do). They just got back to us, a few minutes ago; here is the first part of their statement:

We have long been committed to equal opportunity at all levels of hiring. Our ongoing efforts show positive results. In the case of our staff attorneys, we’ve been very successful in recruiting African-American lawyers. We attribute our success to a number of factors. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, which we will likely further enhance in the near future. This includes the innovative benefit of pay for pro bono work, and our staff attorneys average about 70 hours of pro bono work a year. Our staff attorneys are a stable, productive and respected part of our workforce. Part of this stability can be attributed to our recruitment process, which has benefited from the great number of referrals from our current staff attorneys.

The rest of the Covington statement appears after the jump.

In addition to reading Young’s post and the coverage of it, check out the material on the rest of her blog for background. Props to her for coming up with such headline gems as “Think of my mouth as your next sexual partner.”

P.S. Disclaimer: Please note that Kashmir Hill, former Covington & Burling paralegal, had no role in the writing of this post.

Law Firm Segregation Reminiscent of Jim Crow [Huffington Post]
Georgetown Law Grad Says Big Law Segregation Reminiscent of Jim Crow [Legal Blog Watch]
Ex-Staff Attorney Takes Aim at BigLaw Minority Hiring [WSJ Law Blog]
Spade Project [video blog of Yolanda Young]