Heller: Latest Firm to Delay Associate Starts

Yesterday, Heller Ehrman became the most recent firm to push back start dates and the firm has also withdrawn from some campuses for its interview process.

The start date for new associates was pushed to Jan. 20 from Oct. 13. The affected associates — about 50 — will be paid a stipend of $10,000 each, split into three monthly installments from November to January. They were notified in a series of calls from the heads of the firm’s various offices on Wednesday, said Michael Gotham, the firm’s director of attorney recruiting.

“As of what I had heard this morning, every single person had been at least left a message to call us,” Gotham said, “but more than half of them had been reached directly.”

In March, Thelen announced that it was pushing its start dates from September to January. Pillsbury made a similar acknowledgment in April, only saying that the firm planned to “stagger start dates throughout the fall.”

An Orrick spokesman said its start date is unchanged and most associates will join the firm on Oct. 6, though some will start sooner. Morrison & Foerster Chairman Keith Wetmore said the start dates for the roughly 80 new associates at his firm have not been changed and the incoming class will start between August and late October.

“We have work for our first-years when they get here,” he said.

The Heller decision involved a number of people including firm management and was made for economic reasons, Gotham said.

“Like many firms, we’re taking steps to manage our expenses,” he said.

Heller also pulled some schools from its on-campus interview process, as was first reported on Above the Law and confirmed by Gotham. (Above the Law got its own post on this up while we were typing ours. Get their take here.)

“We’re going to the schools where historically we’ve been the most successful,” Gotham said. That list of at least 20 schools includes Boalt, Stanford, NYU, Columbia, Harvard and Georgetown, to name a few. He wouldn’t comment on how many schools were removed from the process.

—  Niraj Chokshi