Legal News

Orrick to Trim About 40 Lawyers, 35 Staff ? ?Unrelated to Performance?

By Dan Slater

Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, a firm that traces its roots to San Francisco, will lay off approximately 40 lawyers — both associates and counsel — in the firm’s real estate, structured finance and corporate practices.

In addition, the firm will cut approximately 35 staff. The firm says the layoffs are economic-based and unrelated to performance. The announcement comes the same week that international law firm White & Case said it would lay off 70 lawyers and 100 staff.

In a statement, Orrick said: “Throughout 2008, we have done all we could to avoid today’s action: we have redeployed lawyers to different practices and we have cut expenses. Unfortunately, our staffing levels in the affected practices still remained too high given the economic environment our clients and we face.”

Earlier this year we noted that Orrick’s 2007 gross revenue was $772 million, while profits-per-partner amounted to $1.67 million.

Update: A few minutes ago, we chatted with Orrick’s chairman, Ralph Baxter. Baxter says the layoffs were the firm’s last option. “We regret having to do this,” he said. “We only got to this after looking at every way possible to avoid it.” Baxter said the departing members will receive severance packages that “are a bit larger” than the going rates in specific cities.

Interestingly, Baxter said that while work is down “dramatically” in the areas in which the firm had layoffs — structured finance and corporate — elsewhere, even in practices which are largely financing-dependent, business is steady. “In venture capital out here, businesses are getting financing,” he said. “Our public finance practice has been active all year, save for one month.”

Baxter also said that the firm’s “big case litigation” had been a bit slower this year, but that the dip hadn’t been dramatic. “The demand for our services in litigation continues to be quite strong.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 13, 2008 (boomark / email).