MB Big Winner in Program It Designed

White & Case isn’t the only big firm getting the feature treatment from its local paper. Mayer Brown’s “secondment” program was featured by the Chicago Tribune’s law blog.

After the jump, a whole lot of ranting, including why we put “secondment” in quotes.

Here’s the deal: Mayer Brown attorneys are being placed at a variety of big clients around the city, with a few big caveats:

• The placements are “guaranteed” for a year. After that, it’s entirely between the company and the lawyer.
• The attorneys are paid $60,000 for the year by the firm.

Secondments are supposed to benefit everyone involved: the firm deepens its ties to the client; the attorney gets valuable experience seeing things from the “other side of the phone;” and the company gets free legal support. The departures Mayer Brown has made from tradition are ridiculously self-serving, with one exception.  Hence the quotation marks.

The exception is that the lawyers at least get one more year at $60,000, which is a whole lot better than getting laid off. We don’t want to downplay that (although a standard package with three months’ severance would be $40,000 and they wouldn’t have to work). We’re putting that up front of the diatribe to make clear we understand the alternative.

But still.

True secondees remain employed by the firm and are guaranteed their spots when the secondment is up. Many remain on the firm’s payroll for the duration. At worst, they’re treated as being on sabbatical from the firm, with their spots (including compensation, bonus, class standing, etc.) guaranteed upon return (much like associates who go off on clerkships for a year are supposed to be).

So come the end of the year, the client now has to do the firm’s dirty work and actually lay the people off. That strikes us as cowardly. It’s also a shitty thing to do to your client, who has now gotten to know this person for a year and has to either let them go or find money in an already tightened budget. It’s nice to have a free junior lawyer around, but most inhouse departments don’t hire people who have fewer than five or so years’ experience, so they have to create a new position, adding to the administrative hassle.

And will the companies really do that, or will they just assume that there will be more fresh meat next year, when the backed up deferred associates from 2009 and the new graduates from 2010 will be competing for the same few spots? They could just lay the people off and take in another secondee.

These arrangements are supposed to be mutually beneficial, but Mayer Brown seems to be the biggest winner here – they get the goodwill for apparently not laying people off, they avoid the layoff unpleasantry of doing the actual layoffs, they still provide free labor to clients (potentially deepening the ties), and they keep an option on attorneys who are particularly well-regarded by the clients.

The companies come off pretty well, too – a top-flight junior lawyer free for a year isn’t so bad, as long as you don’t mind being the one who actually kicks her to the curb after a year.

The lawyers, well, at least it’s not a layoff. If they’re smart, they’ll bust their asses and leave with a good enough relationship that the company will promise to throw the lawyer some hours, which she can use to either start her own shop or leverage in the job search next year.

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$60,000 is way below market for inhouse, even in Chicago, but Mayer Brown presumably came up with that number based on the subsidy other firms are offering people who take public-interest jobs (which means those people are getting paid above market for those jobs). Does this make sense? Does this pull the floor out on inhouse positions if they can now be filled at the low end with people happy to stay on at a 5% raise from the subsidized rate?

Discuss.

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