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CRAVATH GETS IT RIGHT, AGAIN

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biglaw-450The focus of The American Lawyer story about Richard Levin’s departure after eight years at Cravath, Swaine & Moore understates the most important point: Levin is a living example of things that his former firm, Cravath, does right. I can count at least three.

#1: Top Priority — Client Service

Cravath hired Levin, a top bankruptcy lawyer, from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom on July 1, 2007. At the time, Cravath didn’t have a bankruptcy/restructuring practice. But at the beginning of the downturn that would become the Great Recession, its clients were drawn increasingly into bankruptcy proceedings.

Explaining the firm’s unusual decision to hire Levin as a lateral partner, the firm’s then-deputy presiding partner C. Allen Parker told the New York Times that “the firm was seeking to serve its clients when they found themselves as creditors. Many of Cravath’s clients have landed on creditors’ committees in prominent bankruptcy cases, he said, and the firm has helped them find another firm as bankruptcy counsel.”

In other words, Cravath sought to satisfy specific client needs, not simply recruit a lateral partner who promised to bring a book of business to the firm. The Times article continued, “While Mr. Parker does not foreclose the chance of representing debtors — which is often considered the more lucrative side of the bankruptcy practice — for now, it is an effort to serve clients who are pulled into the cases.”

#2: Mandatory Retirement Age

It seems obvious that Levin’s upcoming birthday motivated his departure to Jenner & Block. Less apparent is the wisdom behind Cravath’s mandatory retirement rule. As The American Lawyer article about his move observes:

“[A]t 64, Levin is now approaching Cravath’s mandatory retirement age. And he says he’s not ready to stop working. ’65 is the new 50,’ Levin says. ‘I’d be bored. I love what I do [and] I want to keep doing it.'”

Well, 65 is not the new 50 — and I say that from the perspective of someone who just celebrated his 61st birthday. More importantly, sophisticated clients understand that a law firm’s mandatory retirement age benefits them in the long run because it makes that firm stronger. When aging senior partners preside over an eat-what-you-kill big law compensation system, their only financial incentive is to hang on to client billings for as long as possible. It creates a bad situation that is getting worse.

Recent proof comes from the 2015 Altman Weil “Law Firms in Transition” survey responses of 320 law firm managing partners or chairs representing almost half of the Am Law 200 and NLJ 350. I’ll have more to say about other results in future posts, but for this entry, one of the authors, Eric Seeger, offered this especially pertinent conclusion about aging baby boomers:

“That group of very senior partners aren’t retiring,” he explains.

Seeger went on to explain that even if they were, younger partners are not prepared to assume client responsibilities. Why? Because older partners don’t want that to happen. According to the Altman Weil survey, only 31 percent of law firm leaders said their firms had a formal succession planning process.

At Cravath, mandatory retirement works with the firm’s lock-step compensation structure to encourage much different behavior. Aging partners confront an end date that provides them with an incentive to train junior attorneys so they can assume client responsibilities and assure an orderly intergenerational transition of the firm’s relationships. Hoarding clients and billings produces no personal financial benefit to a Cravath partner.

In contrast, hoarding is a central cultural component of eat-what-you-kill firms. Individual partners guard clients jealously, as if they held proprietary interests in them. Internal partnership fights over billing credit get ugly because a partner’s current compensation depends on the allocations. Partners have learned that the easiest way to avoid those fights is to keep their clients in silos away from other partners. For clients, it can mean never meeting the lawyer in the firm who could be most qualified to handle a particular matter. If they understood the magnitude of the problem, most clients would be astonished and outraged.

#3: Strategic Thinking

With respect to Richard Levin’s practice area, the most recent Georgetown/Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor Report notes that in 2014 big firm bankruptcy practices suffered a bigger drop in demand than any other area. Lawyers who had billed long hours to big ticket bankruptcy matters have now been repurposed for corporate, transactional, and even general litigation tasks. Don’t be surprised as firms announce layoffs.

Cravath’s timing may have been fortuitous. It hired Levin at the outset of the Great Recession — just as a big boom time for bankruptcy/restructuring lawyers began. Likewise, Levin departs as that entire segment of the profession now languishes. I think Cravath’s leaders are too smart to think that they can time the various segments of the legal market. But the firm’s strategic approach to its principal mission — client service — caused it to do the right things for the right reasons.

The harder they work at that mission, the luckier they get.

THE LATERAL BUBBLE

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Most big law leaders say that they have to keep pushing equity partner profits higher to attract and retain rainmakers. They have repeated that mantra so often and for so long that the rest of the profession has accepted it as an article of faith.

Perhaps it’s true, but two items in the February issue of The American Lawyer prompt this heretical question:

What if the lateral hiring frenzy is creating a bubble?

Victor Li’s “This Time It’s Personal” describes the state of play: lateral hiring is way up. Law firm management consultants, including my friend Jerry Kowalski, predict more of the same for 2012 as firms counter revenue losses from departing partners to prevent the death spiral that can result. Such fear-driven behavior can easily lead to overpayment for so-called hot lateral prospects that turn out to be, well, not so hot.

As I’ve observed previously, the reasons for the lateral explosion have much to do with big law’s evolution. Its currently prevailing business model encourages partners to keep clients in individual silos away from fellow partners, lest they claim a share of billings that determine compensation. Paradoxically, such behavior also maximizes a partner’s lateral options and makes exit more likely. In other words, the institutional wounds are self-inflicted.

But the article quotes several firm leaders who emphasize that, while money was important in motivating some of the partners they acquired, the search for a global platform also mattered. Frank Burch, cochair of DLA Piper, acknowledges that enticing a lateral hire requires that the money offered be comparable. But he also says that his firm “did a lot of hiring from firms that reported higher profits per partner” than DLA Piper. The article cites four: Paul Hastings; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; White & Case; and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.

Except “Crazy Like a Fox” by Edwin B. Reeser and Patrick J. McKenna (also in The American Lawyer February issue), makes the correct observation that a firm’s average PPP is not all that informative. The authors’ focus principally on the growing cohort of non-equity partners in a climate where clients are unwilling to pay for first- and second-year associates. But they make a telling point on a seemingly unrelated topic: the income gap within equity partnerships has exploded.

They note that a few years ago the equity partner pay spread was typically three-to-one; some places it’s now ten-to-one or even twelve-to-one:

“Over the last few years there has been a dramatic change in the balance of compensation, to a large degree undisclosed, in which increasing numbers of partners fall below the firm’s reported average profits per equity partner (PPP)…Typically, two-thirds of the equity partners earn less, and some earn only perhaps half, of the average PPP.”

(Trying to justify this trend, some firm leaders have offered silly explanations, such as geographical differences.)

Now apply this learning to Li’s article. A firm’s average PPP isn’t luring high-powered lawyers; the money at the top is. Perhaps the desire to provide clients with a better global platform plays a role in some laterals’ decisions, but most of the firms experiencing the highest number of lateral partner departures in 2011 are already worldwide players. In fact, four firms — DLA Piper, K&L Gates, Jones Day, and SNR Denton — are simultaneously on both the most departures and most hires list.

Consider an example. Last year when Jamie Wareham became big law’s highly public $5 million man, did leaving Paul Hastings for DLA Piper improve his ability to serve clients? Doubtful. But the bubble question is far more important to the firm: Has Wareham been worth it? Only he and his new partners know for sure.

That leads to a final heretical question: Where a lateral bubble develops, what happens when it bursts or, perhaps more pernicious, develops a slow profitability leak? Nothing good. For the answer, ask those who once worked at Howrey, Heller Ehrman or one of the many other now-defunct firms whose leaders thought that acquiring high-profile laterals offered only upside.

DO THEY COUNT AS BILLABLES?

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In “New Lawyers, New Classes,” the Wall Street Journal reports on firms sending their attorneys through business-education type programs. Describing one full-time four week example, it states the obvious: “[L]aw firms aren’t billing the 160 training hours to clients.”

But the article is silent on a more interesting question: If a lawyer has to devote 160 hours — or any other amount — to firm-required business education, will that time count toward minimum billable hour expectations?

A 1958 ABA pamphlet suggested that a reasonable full-time schedule produced 1,300 client hours a year. That’s right, 1,300. Today, senior partners who had no minimum billables requirements as associates run firms where some new attorney orientation sessions dictate monthly targets, as well as annual ones. Big law associates average more than 2,000 billables a year. Adding another 160 hours — a month’s worth of time — for firm-required education is no small matter.

During year-end reviews, associates typically receive spreadsheets detailing their hours by category: client billables, recruiting, training, pro bono, personal, and so forth. (Hat-tip to The American Lawyer‘s A-List, which prompts many firms to count pro bono hours as billable time.)

How about training? Back in January 2008 when law firms were more concerned about attracting and retaining good associates than they are now, the New York Times found firms attacking enormous associate attrition rates with initiatives aimed at keeping the keepers. But even that didn’t always extend to giving billable credit for training.

For example, the Times wrote, “Strasburger & Price, a national firm based in Dallas, announced last October [2007] that it was decreasing the hours new associates were expected to log, to 1,600 from 1,920 annually. (Lest you think those lawyers will be able to go home early, however, note that newcomers will now be asked to spend 550 hours a year in training sessions and shadowing senior lawyers.)”

According to the NALP directory, Strasberger’s policy is unchanged, but at least it’s transparent. Many big law counterparts have remained opaque.

Consider the public positions of the three firms in the WSJ article — Debevoise & Plimpton; Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCoy; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. In their current NALP listings, none discloses its average associate billables for 2009 or 2010. But that doesn’t mean those in charge aren’t watching hours closely.

According to the Journal, “Debevoise said its associate billable hours rose by more than 10% in 2010 and are up by even more so far this year.” To what? The article doesn’t say — and neither does the firm.

Earlier this year, Milbank’s chairman, Mel Immergut, noted that billables were up, but “still low compared to what [they have] historically been.” Again, no hint of what those levels were or are.

Skadden’s culture is no secret. It became the subject of unwanted attention after one of its associates, Lisa Johnstone, died in June at age 32 — reportedly after weeks of extremely long hours.

All three firms state on their NALP forms that they have no minimum billable hours requirement. Debevoise’s website says that billable and pro bono hours “are monitored by partners to assure an associate’s full involvement in our practice and to attempt to spread workloads fairly.”

So perhaps there’s no need to worry about how those 160 business-education training hours get counted after all. Debevoise cares only about assuring full involvement and fairness for its associates, not whether they meet a minimum number of billables. Like many firms, Milbank actually uses its training programs as a sales tool: “Get paid to go to Harvard,” its website proudly proclaims. Skadden will always be Skadden.

But give credit where it’s deserved: Debevoise ranked an impressive 16th in overall mid-level associate satisfaction this year. Milbank and Skadden fared less well — placing 68th and 69th, respectively, out of 126. (The unfortunate backstory is that overall satisfaction for the survey group dropped to another record low.)

Interestingly, all three responded to this query on the NALP form:

“Billable hours credit for training time.”

Debevoise and Milbank answered “Y.” Skadden said “N.”

“Credit” toward what? Unless billables matter to evaluating or compensating associates, wouldn’t firms without a minimum requirement answer “N/A”?

Maybe their stated answers are typos.