It might not look like it, but there is a lot of carnage on this list. Orrick is down four spots. Proskauer is down four spots. King & Spalding is down 3 spots.
And many of the firms here that are marginally up or holding steady still went through significant layoffs.
After the jump, Law Shucks offers some stats.
Is promising associates that you won’t kick them to the curb the new trend? Vinson & Elkins had an all associates meeting yesterday, and managing partner Joseph Dilg assured associates that the firm would not resort to layoffs.
Great news.
Instead, Dilg told his loyal following that the firm would look to shed $40 million in operating expenses in a variety of ways. A tipster reports:
The firm is going to cut at least $40 million in costs by reducing staff bonuses, no longer reimbursing out of town CLEs, making us pay for our own cell phones on our blackberries, waiting to upgrade computers and a long list of other cost-cutting measures.
That is on top of the pushing back the start dates on incoming associates. Texas Lawyer reports that 3Ls received the news last night:
V&E hiring partner Thomas Leatherbury of Dallas says the incoming associates were notified last night that they can choose a new start date of either Nov. 2 or Jan. 4, 2010. He says “either start date is fine,” but the firm wants the new associates to talk to the practice group leaders and department heads in their areas to “get some input” before making a decision. The Houston-based firm is offering an incentive for the Jan. 4, 2010, date: a $10,000 salary advance the associates will not have to repay.
Tipsters also report that even bigger changes could be coming to V&E down the road. Details after the jump.
The outlook for Texas based law firms is … bright? Texas Lawyer today reports that most top Texas firms are paying associates 2008 bonuses on par with what they received in 2007:
Lawyers with most of the firms say the 2008 associate bonuses are similar, or at the same level, as the bonuses the firms paid to their associates for 2007.
Vinson & Elkins is one of the firms that could be paying Texas associates a bigger bonus than New York associates.
In fact, Texas lawyers seem positive about the future of the Texas market:
[T. Michael] Wilson’s prediction for 2009 echoes that of the other managing partners. “We are guardedly optimistic,” he says. “Who knows what the next six months will bring in terms of the economy and the practice of law?”
That’s a lot different than what is coming out of New York. Remember this nugget from the Cravath bonus memo:
Given the uncertainty of the economy and the business climate going forward, we will not be able to address the issue of whether there will be any year-end bonuses in 2009 until this time next year. However, associates should be prepared for the likelihood that the economy and the Firm’s financial performance next year will not show a significant improvement over this year and they may receive significantly reduced or no year-end bonuses next year.
Better bonuses, lower cost of living, and great barbeque … Texas is looking very competitive isn’t it?
In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, the Houston legal community is getting back to work. WRAL news channel 5 reported that Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell expects to reopen Wednesday. Andrews Kurth has their attorneys working remotely. According to the WRAL report, an Andrews spokesperson said, “all of our BlackBerrys are working.”
Other Houston area firms were contacted by ATL directly. The most important news is that everybody is safe.
Mike Conlon, partner-in-charge of Fulbright & Jaworski’s Houston office, said:
[W]e have been able to assist all that have needed temporary housing. While our Houston office is closed today, our lawyers are working from remote locations, including our other offices in Texas. All computer support functions are operating, and other offices are providing additional support where needed, which is part of Fulbright’s disaster recovery plan.
Fulbright & Jaworski plans to be fully functional by tomorrow.
More news from Houston after the jump.
We’re entering the second half of the Vault 100. This is part of a series of open threads to discuss the firms considered to be the profession’s most prestigious. Because we know you love prestige. And the opportunity for “TTT” accusations. [FN1]
Here’s the next bunch of firms, with prestige scores in parentheses:
Vault notes that attorneys at Pillsbury are treated to “freshly baked cookies.” But they also have to put up with being referred to as “Pillsburians” by Vault.
Compare, contrast, discuss… and if you’re at Pillsbury, have a chocolate chip cookie for us. Earlier:Vault 100 Open Threads – 2009
[FN1] We periodically get e-mails asking for the definition of “TTT,” which appears so often in comment threads. As the uninitiated have surely gathered, it’s a derogatory term. Likely originating on AutoAdmit, it stands for “third tier toilet.” For more, see Urban Dictionary.
Let’s send you into the holiday weekend with some associate bonus news. Here are some law firm bonus announcements that haven’t been previously covered in these pages.
(Firms that previously announced their bonuses, but are being sneaky about the exact amounts and/or the percentage of associates getting them, will be addressed separately. This post is for completely new announcements.)
Some of this news is incomplete. If you can provide more details, please email us. Thanks.
1. Akin Gump (New York): Year-end bonuses, and special bonuses to “those associates and counsel who have performed in accordance with the Firm’s expectations regarding productivity, quality of work and Firm citizenship.” Plus “discretionary merit bonuses” to associates and counsel “who performed in a truly exceptional manner.”
One source at the firm characterizes it as follows:
Full match in NY, with extra bonuses in certain cases (generally to billers over 2400). There has never been an hours requirement, so if past practice is any indicator, anyone not being fired will get it.
Full memo, after the jump.
2. Akin Gump (outside New York): Each associate is allowed to make the case to the firm for a big bonus. A source tells us that this practice of asking associates to write up memos to justify their bonuses started a few years ago. “I wonder how this plays into the current bonus climate, or if anyone else has to do this.”
3. Hogan & Hartson (outside New York): The 2007 bonus memo appears after the jump.
4. Hogan & Hartson (New York): We’ve confirmed the fact that Hogan announced bonuses in New York. It was described to us as a market match. But we haven’t seen a memo or the fine print of the announcement, so we can’t confirm that. Update: The bonus memo for Hogan & Hartson’s New York office appears after the jump.
5. Vinson & Elkins (New York): “V&E matched the New York market bonus (including this year’s special bonus) for its New York associates, to be paid on January 15, 2008. No memo yet, a voicemail.”
6. Sheppard Mullin: Details after the jump.
Attention young lawyers. We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this important announcement:
If you purchased a bar review course from BAR/BRI anywhere in the United States anytime from August, 1997 through July 31, 2006 (the “Class”), you may be affected by a settlement of a class action lawsuit pending in the United States District Court for the Central District of California called Rodriguez, et. al v. West Publishing Corp., d/b/a BAR/BRI, and Kaplan, Inc., Case No. CV-05-3222 R (MCx).
Okay, you already knew about that — and we wrote about it before too. But here’s the important part: the deadline for filing a Proof of Claim is this coming Monday, September 17, 2007. So if you chucked that form into a big “to deal with later” pile, just like we did, you need to fish it out over the weekend.
More discussion, after the jump.
There’s a lot going on this morning, including the resignation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general and the Michael Vick plea hearing. But none of this will prevent fall recruiting from going forward, full speed ahead. So let’s continue with our open threads on Vault 100 law firms.
Here are the Biglaw shops to talk about this morning. Two of them — Alston & Bird and Bingham & McCutchen — are, along with Nixon Peabody, on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For.
Following closely on news of the Vinson & Elkins raise, Andrews Kurth has also raised salaries for first- and second-year associates, to $160,000 and $170,000, respectively. As explained in the memo, the firm is “still working on the details of the compensation structure for other associate classes.” Here’s an article from the Texas Lawyer.
What about other Texas firms? Here’s what we’ve been hearing:
Baker Botts: They should raise later this week or early next week. Prior to the V&E announcement, a Baker source speculated: “[T]hey seem to be waiting on V and E. I think they might be trying to leapfrog them, hoping V and E lowballs.”
Akin Gump: “They had an associates’ committee meeting [yesterday] and said there were working out a few details, but they would be raising in their Texas offices sooner rather than later. Who knows what any of that means.”
The Andrews Kurth memo, in the form of an email from managing partner Robert Jewell, appears after the jump.
Word on the street is that Vinson & Elkins has raised salaries for its Texas and Washington associates. But we haven’t confirmed it directly with someone at V&E. If you can confirm this rumor, please email us. Update (11:08 AM): That was fast; thanks! It’s confirmed: V&E has raised associate salaries for first- and second-year associates.
Things are more complicated for more senior classes. Basically they’re adopting a deferred compensation system, dependent upon hitting an hours target (2000 “Firm Credit Hours”).
For all the gory details, check out the memo, which is posted after the jump.
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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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As we finish off the Vault top 50, we look at some firms went through some tough layoffs.
