Last night, I was on WGN radio discussing my first book, CROSSING HOFFA: A Teamster’s Story. Here’s the link: http://wgnradio.com/2013/06/26/crossing-hoffa/
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
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Monthly Archives: June 2013
THE TRUE COST OF THE WEIL LAYOFFS
The Wall Street Journal describes the layoffs of 60 lawyers and 110 staff as “the starkest sign yet that the legal industry continues to struggle after the recession.” But who, exactly, is struggling?
Not the owners of the business. The overall average profits for equity partners in the Am Law 100 reached record levels in 2012. Even during the darkest days of the Great Recession in 2008, PPP for that group remained comfortably above $1.2 million before resuming the climb toward almost $1.5 million last year.
Not equity partners at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, who earned a reported average PPP of $2.2 million in 2012, according the the American Lawyer.
So Who Suffers?
One group of victims consists of 60 young people who had done everything right until everything went wrong for them on June 24. They’re intelligent, ambitious, and hard-working. Exemplary performance in high school earned them places in good colleges where they graduated at the top of their classes. They attended excellent law schools and excelled, even as the competition got tougher.
All of those accomplishments landed them great jobs. In the midst of a dismal legal job market, they went to work at one of the nation’s most prestigious law firms. Making more than $160,000 a year, many believed that soon they might throw off the yoke of six-figure student loan debt.
Now, they’re unemployed.
Another group of victims consists of 110 staffers who also got the boot. According to the NY Times, approximately half of them were secretaries. These behind-the-scenes workers often go unappreciated by lawyers who mistakenly take all of the credit for their own success.
A third group is a reported 10 percent of partners, many of whom who will suffer compensation cuts of “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” according to the NY Times.
“It’s All About the Future”
Announcing the layoffs, executive partner Barry Wolf described the move as “about the future of the firm and strategically positioning us for the next five years.” But layoffs aren’t about weeding out associates who don’t measure up to the rigorous quality standards necessary for equity partnerships. They’re about matching supply (of associates) with demand (for legal work) according to undisclosed criteria.
In fact, it seems a bit strange to talk about a firm positioning itself for the future while simultaneously dropping a morale bomb on its associates (and some partners) during the height of the summer program. The best and the brightest young prospects are working in big firms where luring that talent into the firms is a top priority. Bad public relations from a high-profile layoff can have a chilling effect that outlasts a single news cycle.
And what is that future going to look like? Will Weil be hiring any new associates over the next 12 months? Or 18 months? Or even 24 months? If so, I know 60 candidates with big firm experience (at Weil) who may be interested.
There is no shortage of current students who will continue to seek high-paying jobs at Weil, Gotshal & Manges. But what if negative publicity dissuades those few with the rare qualities necessary to become superstar partners from even signing up for on-campus interviews? By its very nature, such longer-run damage is impossible to know, much less measure.
Big Law’s Cheerleaders Applaud the Move
Law firm management consultants applauded Weil’s move. That’s not surprising because they have been central players in the profession’s transformation to just another business. They consistently endorse businesslike steps to maximize short-term profits. They expect other firms to follow Weil’s lead, and perhaps some will. Law firm consultant Peter Zeughauser said, “Weil is a bellwether firm and this will be a real wake up call.”
The etymology of bellwether may be relevant. In the mid-15th century, a bell was hung on a wether, a castrated ram that led a domesticated flock. In that way, the noise from the bellwether made it possible to hear the flock coming before anyone saw it.
In an informal Am Law survey, other firm leaders have distanced themselves from Weil. Before following that lead ram, perhaps they’re giving some thought to where it is going.
MY NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED
Today, the Times is running my op-ed ed, “Big Law’s Troubling Trajectory.” Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/opinion/big-laws-troubling-trajectory.html?hp&_r=0
ANOTHER COMMENDABLE CONDUCT AWARD
Big law bankruptcy attorneys may have finally killed their golden goose. We’ll never know if less hubris and more thought might have prevented the U.S. Trustee from releasing new attorney compensation guidelines that surely have prominent members of that bar squirming. Those guidelines earn my latest “Commendable Conduct Award.” Starting November 1, we’ll see how many judges have the courage to apply them.
Restraint in the race to $1,000 an hour billing rates to maximize short-term profits might have served practitioners better in the long run. Likewise, more discretion in responding to media inquiries about the lucrative bankruptcy law world might have been wiser than Weil, Gotshal & Manges partner Harvey Miller’s stunning comment to the Wall Street Journal in 2011: “The underlying principle is, if you can get it, get it.”
Flying Under the Radar
The bankruptcy practice in big firms is unique because there’s no real client putting the usual counter-pressure on attorneys seeking to enhance their personal wealth. It’s the billable hour regime at its worst.
Outside bankruptcy, corporate clients everywhere are pushing back on big law firms’ hourly rate increases, refusing to pay for high-priced first-year associates, demanding budgets, scrutinizing attorney activities, and generally seeking greater economy in the delivery of outside legal services. Bankruptcy attorneys have little comparable accountability. They simply set their rates, decide what tasks to perform, and assign manpower as they see fit.
Hello and Good-bye
Unlike corporate clients who dangle the prospect of long-term relationships and future business to encourage their outside attorneys to be more efficient, bankruptcy practitioners have a series of one-shot engagements. When the current proceeding is over, their bankruptcy “client” of the moment disappears, never to return.
Bankruptcy petitions are also vehicles for law firm oligopolists to share pricing information. When most senior big firm bankruptcy partners request $1,000 an hour, it becomes the reasonable and customary rate. But even more remarkable are the $400 an hour and up rates that they can often get for junior associates — the same ones who add so little value that real clients refuse to pay for them at all.
Theoretical Oversight
The U.S. Trustee reviews fee petitions. But to date, those efforts have amounted to quibbling over obviously suspect expenses, such as $500 hotel rooms when cheaper accommodations were available or taking limos when taxis were a reasonable alternative.
Likewise, attorneys representing competing interests in the bankrupt’s estate — creditors, for example — can object to the fees of other attorneys in the proceeding. But none has any incentive to rock the lucrative hourly rate boat in which they all sit. Bankruptcy judges have the final word on attorneys’ fees petitions and they routinely rubber-stamp them.
Now It’s Becoming Real
When the U.S. Trustee first proposed the new guidelines, big firm bankruptcy lawyers throughout the country united in opposition. The most strident objections were to the idea that firms should reveal hourly rates for comparable non-bankruptcy associates and partners working for real clients.
Were firms worried about providing data that would allow the U.S. Trustee and supervising courts to compare hourly rates sought in bankruptcy with those resulting from a market that is at least somewhat more competitive? Soon, we’ll find out.
The new forms accompanying the guidelines require, among other things, that firms reveal the “blended hourly rates” of their personnel in 10 different categories ranging from equity partners to paralegals. In addition to the blended rates sought in the fee petition, firms also must disclose their firmwide (or, in some cases, office wide) blended rates for each category.
A Step on the Road to Transparency
The new guidelines aren’t perfect and attorneys will manipulate them. Budgets are optional. Hourly “step rate” increases are automatic as attorneys gain seniority. Attorney categories are too broad, with a single category for all equity partners and with associates grouped into categories covering three years. An especially large loophole allows firms to report either the “billed” or “collected” comparable hourly rate. (Real clients request discounts from standard hourly rates, and they often get them.)
Even so, the U.S. Trustee deserves credit for moving a dark corner of the profession from opacity to translucence. Free market devotees — of which big law has many — should embrace the changes. So far, big firm partners have resisted them vehemently.
The governing principle for too much of the large law firm world has become “if you can get it, get it.” Perhaps many of those espousing that view are about to “get it” in a much different way than they have in the past.
PROOF OF THE PROFESSION’S CRISIS
This article won the “Big Law Pick of the Week.” BigLaw‘s weekly newsletter reaches the world’s largest law firms and the general counsel who hire them.
Someone should remind law firm leaders that the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination isn’t just for clients. It can work for them, too. The latest Altman-Weil survey of firm leaders is proof of widespread management incompetence, stupidity, and worse.
The survey went to the chairs or managing partners of 791 firms with 50 or more lawyers. Firms with more than 250 lawyers (that is, mostly Am Law 200 firms) had a much higher response rate (42 percent) than smaller firms (26 percent). In other words, the survey results tilt toward big law firm attitudes.
The troubling big picture
The Am Law Daily’s summary includes comments from the survey’s author, Thomas Clay, who said that too many firms are “almost operating like Corporate America…managing the firm quarter-to-quarter by earnings per share.” That shortsighted approach is “not taking the long view about things like truly changing the way you do things to improve client value and things of that nature.”
For example, 95 percent of respondents view increased pricing competition as an ongoing trend, and 80 percent expect shifts to non-hourly billing structures. But only 29 percent have made significant changes to their own pricing practices in the wake of the recession.
Group stupidity
It gets worse. When asked to identify their greatest challenges over the next 24 months, the item that managers cite most often is “increasing revenue.” The rest of the list is, in order: new business, growth, profitability, management transition, cost management, and attracting talent. If you’re wondering where clients fit — other than as a source of revenue and profits in items one, two, and three — “client value” finished eighth.
Long-term thinking? Forget it. The client silo mentality and resulting culture of short-termism are widespread and deep. Almost 30 percent of law firm leaders say their firms lack adequate mid-level partners to whom they could transition clients. In another set of responses, they reveal why: 78 percent say that “senior partners don’t want to retire”; 73 percent admit that “senior partners don’t want to forfeit current compensation by transitioning client work.”
Lateral incompetence
Meanwhile, lateral hiring remains the prevailing strategy to achieve growth. Ninety percent of respondents plan to hire laterals in 2013; more than 60 percent seek entire practice groups. For firms of more than 250 lawyers, the numbers are even more startling: 100 percent plan to acquire laterals; 92 percent plan to acquire groups.
How much time do lateral partners get to prove their worth? Almost 60 percent of responding firm leaders say two years or more; 30 percent don’t set a time frame.
What happens when laterals don’t meet the expectations that brought them into the firm? Two-thirds of firm leaders said that they “sometimes, rarely or never” tell unproductive lateral hires to leave.
Institutional ineptitude
Almost 40 percent of respondents say their partners’ morale is lower compared to the beginning of 2008. And those partners survived the purges of 2009 and beyond.
If you’re looking for contributors to declining morale, try these. Seventy-two percent of firm leaders report that fewer equity partners will be a permanent trend going forward. Three-fourths have either tightened their standards or take them more seriously. Meanwhile, 92 percent of responding two-tier firms don’t have an up-or-out policy as non-equity partner profit centers grow.
To summarize:
Managing partners know that change is coming and clients are demanding it, but firms aren’t revisiting their basic strategies or business models.
Growth and profits finish far ahead of enhancing client value as most law firm leaders’ top concerns.
Leaders view aggressive lateral hiring as critical to law firm growth, but when laterals don’t produce, most firms don’t do much about it.
Succession planning is problematic because senior partners don’t want to relinquish compensation that is tied to their client billings.
As senior leaders continue to pull up the equity partner ladder on the next generation, morale plummets and managing partners worry about the absence of mid-level talent to serve clients in the future.
Taking all of this together, psychologists would call it a severe case of cognitive dissonance — simultaneously holding contradictory thoughts in your head. Those who assert that most big firms are resilient and face no life-threatening problems are wrong. A crisis of leadership is already upon us as lot of supposedly smart people continue to do some really dumb things. Don’t take my word for it; they’re outing themselves.
The Belly of the Beast 