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Die Lehren aus dem Heller-Desaster

Hintergründiges zur Auflösung der Sozietät Heller vor einem Jahr (...jurabilis! berichtete natürlich, siehe auch diesen Beitrag):

For Michael Charlson, a partner who was at Heller for 23 years, the dissolution was a sign of the changing legal world and even a change in why people become lawyers. He recalled that when Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian first raised salaries to $125,000 about a decade ago, Heller's associates came to him demanding raises, and he warned them to be careful what they ask for.

"When you start paying those salaries, the tolerance for people coming in at 1,500 or 1,600 hours a year, the commitment to pro bono, those tolerances shrink a lot," said Charlson, who launched Hogan & Hartson's Silicon Valley office this year with about 30 people from Heller, including attorneys and staff. "There was a lot of sadness about the fact that a place that could combine the quality of the legal work we provided with the humanity of the place just wasn't going to be able to make it anymore," he said. "In some sense it was a really sad statement about where the profession, if not the broader society, had gone."

Full post as published by jurabilis - German bLAWg from Berlin. on September 24, 2009 (boomark / email).