Why Are Lawyers Still Expecting Spring Bonuses?

by lawshucks on January 20, 2012

Exhibit A:

The Goldman Bonus ‘Bloodbath’

By bloodbath, we’re talking bonuses ranging from flat to down 30 or 40%, depending on area, but at least base pay is flat, unlike…

Exhibit B:

Bonus Watch ’12: JPMorgan

First year associate base pay down to $120 from $125, second years to $140 from $150, bonuses flat.

Exhibit C:

Layoffs Watch ’12: Jefferies

Layoffs from MDs to admins

Exhibit D:

Morgan Stanley beats expectations with cost cuts

It was the last among major banks to dive into the Wall Street layoffs bloodbath last year, announcing plans only in mid-December to cut 1,600 employees from its payroll across all levels of banking and trading operations. [Ed: we're not even going to try to list all of the other banks' layoffs here]The bank had already cut hundreds of underperforming financial advisers from its wealth management business earlier in the year. The business ended 2011 with 887 fewer financial advisers than at the start.On a net basis, including strategic hires, Morgan Stanley’s workforce declined by 643 workers, or 1 percent, last year. The cuts were on par with the decline in workers at JPMorgan’s investment bank, but less than Goldman’s 7 percent decline.

Exhibit E:

DEALBOOK; Royal Bank of Scotland Plans to Cut 3,500 Jobs and Sell Assets

Exhibit F:

MetLife Will Layoff As Many As 4,300 Employees, Closing Mortgage Unit

Exhibit G:

The Dawn of Lower Pay on Wall St.

Overall compensation on Wall Street this year is expected to drop at least 30 percent, reflecting the dismal financial results reported this week by the industry standard-bearers Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. The compensation ratios are hard to evaluate because this year’s payouts include the deferred portions of previous years’ awards, and include only the current components of this year’s.

And on and on and on…

So why do we think things are just peachy in BigLaw?

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Peter Jackson, who looks like the hobbits he’s currently directing, also does some side project passion work advocating, through a documentary, for the release of the West Memphis Three.  Basically, three Arkansas then-teenagers who were convicted of murdering three second graders.  The convicts’ (and many of the victims’) advocates have long held that the three were wrongly convicted.

Jackson financed the film “West of Memphis,” which purports to show all of the defects in the investigation and prosecution.  The film is currently screening at Sundance, and it contains some incendiary allegations, including some testimony that another guy admitted to the crimes.

The BigLaw angle, from the press release (via Deadline Hollyw0od):

Echols’ attorney, Stephen Braga of Ropes & Gray, said: “This is critical new information which reveals that the people closest to Terry Hobbs, his family members, may know much more about Terry’s involvement in the West Memphis Three case than they have ever acknowledged. If this is the Hobbs Family Secret, then what a horrific cost that secrecy has imposed on the lives of so many people – perhaps most significantly Pam Hobbs who deserves to know what really happened to Stevie on the night of the murders, as do the Byers and Moore families. With the secret now out, let’s hope that someone in the Hobbs family has the heart, the soul and the courage to come forward to tell the truth directly. In the meantime, I have given our investigative materials concerning these new witnesses – along with other related information – to District Attorney Scott Ellington for his review and action.”

See, it’s not all billion-dollar deals for BigLaw – it’s life-and-death pro bono work, too.

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Is Simpson Out-Wachtelling Wachtell?

January 19, 2012

Wachtell’s herculean efforts to keep management in place are legendary.  Marty Lipton invented the poison pill for crying out loud. But that was 30+ years ago. Now it looks like Simpson Thacher has come up with the most-recent tool to protect management. Eliminating stockholders’ rights to take a company to court. In Carlyle Group’s pending [...]

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Skadden Alum Gets Big IB Promotion

January 17, 2012

David Kurtz left Skadden almost a decade ago, so this doesn’t qualify for the Lateral Tracker, but we always like to see our former brethren doing well. Kurtz (BA, JD Case Western Reserve), now 57, is the new global head of restructuring at Lazard. Restructuring banking is filled with former lawyers. Interestingly, one catalyst for [...]

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Kindler Disses Alma Mater Cravath

January 12, 2012

The WSJ is surprised Rob Kindler showed up in a $68 million deal.  The head of M&A at Morgan Stanley is usually involved in much bigger deals – according to the press release announcing his hire from JP Morgan, he had worked on $200 billion worth of deals from 2000 to 2006. And of course, [...]

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Skadden v. Wachtell Hostile Deal Not Following Usual Path

January 11, 2012

Ronald Barusch cites three conventional wisdoms of hostile deals: A staggered board coupled with a poison pill makes a target company effectively bulletproof against hostile attacks; Cash is king in a hostile bid (as opposed to a stock-for-stock deal); and A target’s “just say no” posture is smarter than proposing a counter-offer But his former [...]

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Morgan Stanley Finally Decapitates One of its Two Legal Heads

January 9, 2012

A year ago, we wrote that Morgan Stanley’s law department was oddly structured. Frank Barron, who joined from Cravath in 2010, was the Chief Legal Officer.  Government Affairs and a few other organizations reported to him. Eric Grossman, who joined from Davis Polk in 2006, was General Counsel of the Americas, Global Head of Litigation and [...]

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BigLaw Alum Fired from NFL Job Over Contract Mistake

January 9, 2012

We’ve written a number of posts about the BigLaw-NFL connection, ranging from the groundbreaking work firms like Dewey & LeBoeuf and Weil Gotshal have done in creating the free-agency labor framework (including the most-recent litigation) to the league’s hiring of guys like former Patton Boggs partner DeMaurice Smith taking the top job at the players’ [...]

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Anyone Know Where Scott Barshay Is Vacationing?

December 8, 2011

This ALD article was interesting.  Cravath Inks Two Deals in One Week for IBM. Deal #1 ($440 million acquisition of DemandTec): Cravath corporate partner George Schoen, tax partner Andrew Needham, employee benefits partner Jennifer Conway, and environmental partner Matthew Morreale are taking the lead in advising IBM on the transaction. Deal #2: In the second [...]

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15 Years for Former Debevoise Perv

December 6, 2011

Pretty simple.  Kenneth Schneider is now a convicted sex offender in addition to being a douchebag, as we previously chronicled. He was in Moscow in 1998 to open Debevoise’s office, which is where he manipulated his way into taking a young, male ballet student as his sex slave.  National Law Journal has the details on [...]

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