Latham

What’s the Latham Billing Code for ‘Chilin’ With Oliver Stone’?

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You have to hand it to the people at Latham & Watkins. Former employees can bitch and moan all they want about being laid-off, but the firm has a certain kind of “star quality.”

Take this story from this month’s American Lawyer. It turns out that when Oliver Stone needed to figure out what was really going on during the height of the recession, he turned to Latham attorneys Alexander Cohen and Brian Cartwright. The lawyers are at Latham now, but their previous government experience gave Stone the inside knowledge he was looking for.

And because of their efforts, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps will be a much better movie…

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How Did Latham Become the Poster Child for Layoffs?

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Back in February 2009, Latham & Watkins laid off 440 people. They weren’t the first firm to lay people off, they weren’t the last, and you can even argue that they didn’t even lay off the most associates in percentage terms.

But somehow Latham has taken a bigger public relations hit because of its layoffs than any other firm. The firm fell ten spots in last year’s Vault rankings. It’s been referenced in New York Times movie reviews in connection with lawyer layoffs. Hell, people turned Latham into a verb, and not a nice verb.

Now, the latest ignominy. The verb “Lathamed” isn’t just in Urban Dictionary; it’s in the Latham & Watkins firm description in the Chambers guide:

In 2008 gross revenue slipped to $2 billion and profits per equity partner were down by 21 percent, according to 2009 Am Law data. The initial response was a number of performance-related layoffs which was followed, in February 2009, by the laying off of another 190 associates and 250 support staff members. Such was the severity of the cuts that the expression “to be Lathamed” (which, by its most polite definition, means “to be laid off”) was coined.

How did it come to this for Latham?

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Are Am Law 100 Firms Ever Going to Change?

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Am Law Daily has what can only be termed a frightening headline today:

The Am Law 100 2010: Too Big to Fail?

Nooooo! Haven’t we learned that “too big to fail” is terrible? It’s bad for our economy when things are too big to fail — too often, too big means too inefficient to change:

Carrying dozens of offices through the worst recession in a generation might sound like a prescription for disaster. But heads of The Am Law 100′s most geographically diverse firms say that their business model is not only alive, but robust.

Have we learned nothing from everything that’s happened? Do these firms really think that the entire legal recession can be blamed on so-called “entitled” junior associates who had the audacity to accept the money firms were willing to pay them?

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Latham Lathams Accrued Vacation

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In a move that can best be described as cheap, Latham & Watkins joins a growing list of firms that will not allow associates to accrue vacation time. Why would a firm deny its associates the opportunity to get paid out for unused vacation days when they leave the firm (voluntarily or involuntarily)? Because it saves them money, of course.

I suppose Latham could have put it this way: “We’ll no longer honor accrued vacation time because we don’t want to be on the hook for extra paychecks after we s***can you.” But where’s the fun in that? Instead Latham tried to sell associates on the idea that its change in vacation policy would allow associates to take unlimited vacation days.

Latham associates weren’t fooled by the memo. Check it out and see if you would have fallen under the spell of spin …

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