Here's the most recent result of my job search, indicative of all my attempts at on-campus interviewing (OCI) this year:
I learned yesterday that Heller Ehrman, LLP, one of the larger and older West Coast firms, will dissolve on Friday because of debts in the neighborhood of $50 million.God save all us new J.D.s who graduate in the bottom 90% of our class.
Posts
2 comments:
on the bright side, Heller Ehrman is a pretty atypical case. I hear from a friend-of-a-friend who work(ed?) there that their financial procedures were pretty loony and not at all typical of how most large firms manage such things.
wish I could give you really solid specifics, but the conversation was taking place over beers in a busy bar. to the best of my understanding and recollection though, they were spending down to zero (through partner payouts of whatever was left after expenses) at the end of every year and then operating in the red for at least the first half of the next year, rather than keeping something on hand for operating expenses or emergencies.
like some of the subprime REITs, this model worked more or less ok for a while, but over the last year, they lost a lot of billable hours in part at least because a significantly larger than usual number of cases opted to settle rather than litigate.
at any rate, they were apparently a pretty right-wing firm, so I'm not exactly heart-broken about their demise.
also, the financial crash (and bailout) is going to be payday for lawyers all over the country. I don't think there'll be too much of a job shortage for too long.
That's interesting to know about how Heller Ehrman operated. I wonder if the WSJ or ABA articles will discuss it. Not keeping some kind of contingency for the first few or several months of the year doesn't seem wise to me.
As for their politics, the older a firm is, the more conservative and entrenched it tends to be -- patriarchal, strict sense of seniority (where it ends up being impossible for a younger, newer attorney to effectively tell the old guard that something's rotten in the state of Denmark), and sexist nonsense from older male attorneys who believe that women shouldn't be allowed in law school.
There's still plenty of practitioners out there who attended law school when there were very few women, and the professors would let women speak only on "ladies' day."
As for lawyer payday, I'm going to try to work a commercial paper course into my schedule next term.
Post a Comment