Legal News

During Downturn, Some Firms Paying Lawyers To Do Good. Discuss.

By Ashby Jones

Big Law — roughly defined as the nation’s 200 largest law firms (with a few UK-based firms thrown in) — has been criticized mercilessly in the last year or so. A few common snipes: their compensation structures are inefficient. Their hiring (and firing) practices are rigid and outmoded. And there’s the old bugaboo, the billable hour, which seems to get round-housed by someone on nearly a weekly basis. The hammering has left more than a few managing partners (and law-firm public-relations specialists) in a perpetual state of near-panic.

But after reading Nathan Koppel’s article today in the WSJ, we’ve decided it’s time to take a little breather and shower the firms (some of them at least) with a modest dose of Law Blog love.

Here’s why: As law firms cope with a drop-off in their business, some are testing out a novel strategy: paying junior lawyers to work in public-interest jobs. Some are even paying their associates simply not to come in for a while. Frankly, we think this shows some innovation, clear-thinking and, yes, some generosity too.

Morgan, Lewis, for instance, has delayed the start date for 68 incoming lawyers by one year, until the fall of 2010. But the firm will pay the lawyers up to $70,000 each if they take on such jobs as litigating at a public defender’s office or providing corporate-law advice to a nonprofit organization. Pillsbury Winthrop has extended a one-year offer to pay salary and benefits to each of 55 laid-off lawyers who takes on a public-interest job. Simpson Thacher has launched a similar program.

Other firms are offering generous stipends to lawyers to take the year off, no strings attached. Skadden has offered all of its associates and incoming lawyers the option to take a year off to pursue “personal or professional interests” at one-third of their salary plus benefits. And Latham & Watkins has offered $75,000 to any incoming lawyer who wants to take the year off and start in the fall of 2010.

Of course, most big firms aren’t taking this approach; opting instead for layoffs. And those that are can articulate cold, hard business reasons for such moves, like buoying their reputations or making sure they have enough lawyers around if and when the economy improves.

But for now, the public-interest world is loving it. “It seemed like manna from heaven when law firms approached us about underwriting the costs of having [lawyers] work for us,” says Dinah PoKempner, general counsel of Human Rights Watch.

LB Readers, care to agree or disagree with us on this?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 20, 2009 (boomark / email).