Legal Pad

The Long See-Ya-Later: Pillsbury Delays New Associates

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman waited a long time to announce whether it's first-years would be starting on time in September or, like so many other firms' new crop of associates, be delayed for some months.  On Friday, the Shark reported that Pillsbury was indeed delaying start dates, and that some associates will be waiting a lot longer than they might've expected.

Conversely, other associates-to-be can take a mid-five-figure severance from a job they've never actually had, and just go away forever.  This strikes me as a good deal.  I have been not working at Pillsbury my entire professional life and they haven't paid me a dime for it.

Read the story at the Shark, and also check out our companion blog's legendarily despair-inducing listing of pretty much every firm's program to terrify and anxietize graduating law students.

— Brian McDonough

MoFo Defers Fall Class; Pillsbury Still Silent

Morrison & Foerster is deferring 40 percent of its fall associate class until April 2010, according to a firm statement. The other 60 percent will start this year, Nov. 2.

MoFo’s deal is a mixed bag. Those who start in April get $5,000 a month for doing nothing until they join the firm. Or, they all have the option to defer for 10 months if they work for a nonprofit, with an additional $15,000 for doing so.

Speaking of deferrals, we still haven’t heard from Pillsbury on their fall class. A firm spokeswoman said last week they just haven’t decided yet (Update: ... and told us Tuesday morning there's no new info). We tried asking again Monday, but it was pretty late, and we haven’t heard back yet. Kinda makes us wonder what's up over there.  If you know, our tip line is open.

For the Big Scary Roundup of the deferment carnage, see the massively thorough, constantly updating table on our law school blog, The Shark.

MoFo’s statement, after the jump.

Recruiter Shifts to Career Counseling for Layoff Victims

Recruiting firm Major Lindsey & Africa has decided to take this lemony legal market and make lemonade.

In an apparent bet that firms will keep axing jobs, MLA is offering firms a career counseling service for associates they're laying off. MLA will also advise any of the thousands of unemployed associates already wandering the streets and reevaluating their lives.

The service will provide career coaching and help unemployed associates hone their resumes, search strategies, career goals and interview skills. The intensive 12-week program will have one-on-one and group coaching on how to market and network, or even explore alternative career possibilities.

The move was prompted by firms’ calls for help when they were considering layoffs.

“When we started to get bombarded with calls for help, starting in January, it started to make us think we could really be of service,” said MLA’s Courtney Goldstein, who oversees the west region for MLA’s associate practice group.

Being of service, after the jump

Hiring Partner Discusses His Firm's Salary Cut Decision

Layoffs have subsided. Now it’s time to hack away at salaries.

McKenna Long & Aldridge said Tuesday it will cut fall incoming associate salaries by $20,000, a move that affects 12 people joining the 400-plus lawyer firm this fall.The East Coast firm has about a hundred lawyers in California.

In top markets like California, an incoming associate will now make $140,000, while in markets such as Atlanta, they'll earn less.

McKenna ranked 105th in last year’s AmLaw 200, and joins several similarly situated firms choosing salary freezes over layoffs. McKenna hasn’t conducted any layoffs, and said Tuesday it “hopes not to.”

Early this month, Hogan & Hartson said it is cutting salaries for all first years, a move that’s meant to avoid layoffs. And when Allen Matkins cut salaries last month, it said the move averted more layoffs.

McKenna stays ahead of the salary curve, after the jump.

When You're Job Hunting, Sometimes Drastic Times Call For ...

BETWEEN JOBS An occasional look at how job hunting legal professionals cope with a crisis economy.

If these frightening times find you young and unemployed, here’s some advice from a prior downturn: Do anything it takes to get experience, even if that entails accepting a low salary, relocating, or taking a detour through Egypt.

San Francisco plaintiff lawyer Doug Saeltzer, now at Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger, did all three after earning his J.D. from Hastings in the wake of the early 1990s recession.

Saeltzer said he had hit the summer job market before his third year with a focus on litigation. Civil or criminal, plaintiff or defense side, it didn’t matter. But the summer was pretty dry. “I remember I sent out hundreds of letters and I think I had three interviews,” he recalled. “I ended up getting a job. I felt incredibly lucky.”

The summer went well, but the firm he was at shrunk, so Saeltzer didn’t have a job coming out of law school in 1994. The market for fresh graduates was almost dead. Firms were laying off (though perhaps not as drastically as they are now). Corporate work had dried up completely, Saeltzer said, so any litigation jobs available had 10 times the number of applicants, and they required experience. Finding employment felt “like an impossible task in front of you,” he said. “And everybody’s very polite about telling you that they wish that they could hire you but they can’t.”

So Saeltzer interviewed with the U.S. Army and became a captain in the JAG Corps.

How he got from there to Walkup, after the jump ...

Dude, Where's My Job?

In the past three days, six more U.S. firms have either cancelled or shortened summer programs, rescinded offers to 3Ls, or deferred start dates for incoming first-years. The latest are Dechert, which shortened its summer, and Squire Sanders, which pushed start dates back to January. Our sister blog, The Shark, is tracking all the cuts it hears about in one handy (if increasingly long) chart. See the chart here along with interviews with struggling 3Ls here.

—  Cynthia Foster

Two Firms That Want to Hire Associates (a.k.a. A Couple of Needles in The Haystack)

BETWEEN JOBS An occasional look at how job hunting legal professionals cope with a crisis economy.

Our radar has picked up two tiny pockets of associate hiring activity in California.

In San Francisco, 72-lawyer Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass has made one offer to a mid-level associate and is scouring resumes for one more, in litigation. About half the firm’s lawyers are litigators, and litigation is up across areas including false advertising, antitrust, commercial and real estate law, said Jeffrey Knowles, one of the firm’s three managing partners.

“We are getting considerably more resumes” than is typical, Knowles said, although he didn’t have statistics offhand. The firm didn’t advertise the openings; enough interest has come through cold calls, recruiters and personal connections, he said. (Again, connections played a role. The associate who recently got an offer from Coblentz knew an associate already working at the firm, Knowles said.)

Meanwhile, Blank Rome is looking for associates to round out its new Los Angeles office. The 500-some lawyer firm, based out of Philadelphia, launched its West Coast operation with five new partners this week. The firm has hired one litigation associate for Los Angeles already and is looking for more, Managing Partner Carl Buchholz told Legal Pad. “We’re interviewing now,” he said.

Though he said the firm has no target number of hires, he said the ideal candidates would be mid-level associates. The office is focusing on litigation (including commercial, entertainment, environmental and insurance coverage) and real estate for now, with other practices to be added in time, Buchholz said.

The liaison hiring partner for Blank Rome’s L.A. office is David Zeehandelaar.

—  Petra Pasternak

Orrick's 2 Percent Layoff Distinction

We’re working on the Orrick layoffs, and what looks clear at first blush — 100 associates, 200 staffers pinkslipped — turns out to be a little murky.

It’s unclear what percentage of Orrick’s associate workforce got sent home today. The firm announced it had cut 100 associates, and says it had 712. That makes a 14 percent reduction. But the firm calls it 12 percent, by adding 95 of counsel to swell its non-partner ranks to 807.

Why count of counsels, we asked — were any of them shown the door? The firm has told us that the “100 associates” number actually included of counsel. Legal Pad has been asking all morning how many of counsel were let go, but the firm continues to hedge.

What’s the big deal over a perception of 2 percent? Twelve percent is the amount by which Latham & Watkins reduced its associate ranks on Friday — at that point the largest reduction by any U.S.-based firm. Orrick’s math gives it a tie rather than setting a new record.

Big firms always want to be seen to be on the cutting edge, but not when they’re cutting jobs.

— Amanda Royal

There's Hope! At Least One Firm's Added An Associate This Month

BETWEEN JOBS An occasional look at how job hunting legal professionals cope with a crisis economy.

He’d been happy at Lewis and Roca, he told Legal Pad this afternoon, and was searching for a firm of a similar size and level of practice. Schnader Harrison, a Philadelphia-based law firm with about 200 lawyers, has added two partners to its San Francisco office this year, one in bankruptcy and another in commercial/IP litigation. What’s more, one associate left the firm to relocate to Sacramento.

Orzano, the tenth lawyer in the San Francisco office now, says he counts himself very lucky. “I feel like I found a great fit in a time when people are sort of lucky to have a job,” he said.

But though luck may have played its part, another move Orzano made during his job search may have been the clincher.

How so, you ask? Read the jump ...

MoFo Slashes Bonuses, Freezes Salaries

Morrison & Foerster has frozen associate salaries and rejiggered its discretionary bonus structure for 2008 from a range of between $25,000 to $80,000 down to a range of between $6,000 and $62,000.

A memo to of-counsel and associates from Chairman Keith Wetmore said all 2008 bonuses will be paid on February 27, but “evaluation-based bonuses” are being revised. Hours-based bonuses and New York discretionary bonuses are the same as previously announced in May.

Also, the firm has frozen associate salaries for 2009. But, if you live in New York, you might get your 2009 raise sometime in 2010:

“In all offices except New York, 2009 base compensation will not increase by virtue of advancing a class year. In New York, however, where all major New York firms implemented step increases this year, the step increase will be paid as a Contribution Bonus in January 2010 in an amount equal to the step increase that would otherwise have applied for that class,” the memo read.

Wetmore confirmed the confidential memo (including the bonus table), which was first published on the legal blog Above The Law, is accurate.

— Amanda Royal