Banking Law

Today's Law Blog touts the big bucks bankruptcy lawyers are pulling in. While big law is laying off corporate lawyers, bankruptcy is back in vogue and paying serious money to partners with skills and (we assume) portable business who can move laterally as quickly as they can move forward.

Take Luc Despins, a veteran of many big bankruptcies, including Enron and Lehman Brothers. Paul Hastings last year paid him more than $5 million per year, guaranteed for three years, to lure him from Milbank Tweed.



Raniero D'Aversa Jr., who used to be a top bankruptcy partner at Mayer Brown, was paid about $2.5 million last year to join Orrick Herrington ? a 25% pay raise for D?Aversa.

A couple of years ago it would have been impossible to imagine firms throwing professional-baseball money at bankruptcy lawyers, who can not only command fat salaries on the lateral market but are getting paid more just to stay put ? because of the risk, of course, that they could jump to a competitor.

Even ancient mariners are taking calls from headhunters.

Down in Houston, Hugh Ray, the 66-year-old head of restructuring at Andrews & Kurth, says he's surprised that even he?s getting barraged by recruiters. ?I?m getting calls all the time, and I?m an old man,? he says. ?It makes your inner child feel loved.?

Personally, my inner child would love some ice cream rather than a headhunter's call, but I won't get any (ice cream, that is) until Lent is over. In the interim, I'll prepare my inner child to squeal in delight as he fields calls from headhunters looking for bank regulatory lawyers. Those of us who've been through down times before know that bank lawyers can turn from being obstetricians to oncologists without missing a beat.