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Friday, February 27, 2009, 2:48pm PST
Latham & Watkins lays off 8% of attorneys
Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal - by Eric Young
Latham & Watkins LLP laid off 190 attorneys, about 8 percent, in a sign that even the wealthiest law firms cannot avoid the recession’s wrath.
The firm will also cut 250 staff jobs across the firm.
Scores of corporate law firms have laid off lawyers, frozen salaries and cut back on expenses in other ways. Latham’s cuts are among the deepest to date among big firms and the development piqued an already heightened sense of unease among law firms because it is among the nation’s highest grossing firms.
Latham said it collected slightly more than $2 billion in 2007, second only to Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.
But Latham revenue dipped 4 percent in 2008. And profits per partner - a widely used measure of health - declined 21 percent to $1.803 million, one of the sharpest drops among big law firms last year.
Robert Dell, Latham’s chairman, said the firm made the job cuts because it had too many lawyers for the work it was handling.
“We must adjust our staffing levels in line with the projected needs of our clients,” he said. “Our structure was built to serve even greater demand based on the historical levels of robust growth we experienced before the rapid onset of this global recession.”
Latham, with 28 offices, did not say where its cuts would take place. The American Lawyer magazine reported that the cuts predominantly affect the firm’s New York and Los Angeles offices.
The firm implemented other cost-cutting measures in recent months, including freezing associate salaries this year. That means first- and second-year lawyers will get base salaries of $160,000. More experienced associates will get the same base salary in 2009 that they got in 2008. Many other law firms have since followed suit, implementing salary freezes.
Latham has 2,300 lawyers in 28 offices. In San Francisco the firm has 120 attorneys and in Silicon Valley it has 110 attorneys.
San Francisco Business Times



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