Forgive any unintended offense, but as we think about the untimely demise of Dewey & LeBoeuf, we can’t help but think of the 1985 comedic triumph Fletch.

Dr. Joseph Dolan: You know, it’s a shame about [Dewey & LeBoeuf].

Fletch: Oh, it was. Yeah, it was really a shame. To go so suddenly like that.

Dr. Joseph Dolan: Ahh, [they were] dying for years.

Fletch: Sure, but… the end was really… very sudden.

Dr. Joseph Dolan: [They were hemorrhaging partners for eight months]!

Fletch: Yeah, but I mean the very end, when [they actually filed]. That was extremely sudden.

The firm has been added to the BigLaw Dead Pool, based on last night’s petition for bankruptcy.

They become the 23rd firm that has been ranked in the AmLaw 100 that ultimately failed.  It was by far the largest.

Layoffs

We’re going to count their layoffs as layoffs.  Here’s the relevant rule from our methodology, which has been in place from the beginning.

A number of events, like the Heller dissolution, aren’t included here because those are complete failures of a firm, not just selective layoffs.

Best we can tell, both Howrey and Heller laid people off after closing up shop. We’re using the full 533 count per the WARN filing, since those were done before the bankruptcy filing (notwithstanding our delay in putting it into the database).  We have them allocated 60/40 staff/lawyer because that’s the average ratio for the 15,000 other people we’ve tracked.

We may also have to adjust that number downward if we can confirm that it includes the 130 people the firm laid off in March.

Counting previous layoffs, the firm laid off 902 total people 520 staff, 382 lawyers (allocation may vary as we get better information).  That’s by far #1.  Allen & Overy drops to #2 with 617.  More effects on the rankings can be found in the Top 10 Layoff Lists.

Sorry about the formatting.

In 2009, UK firms were ahead of the curve in laying people off.  Could that trend be starting again?

Herbert Smith, #29 on the 2011 Global 100, is reportedly laying off up to 51 London lawyers and staff – three percent of that office’s headcount.  The firm has about 1100 total lawyers.

The corporate cuts [ed: 23 of the 51] equate to almost 10% of the London team. A further five fee-earner positions are at risk in real estate, with the remaining job cuts affecting professional support lawyers and personal assistants. The firm is also now expecting to offer jobs to a maximum of 75% of its NQs this autumn, down from retention rates of 80%-90% posted last year.

Herbert Smith’s only previous reported round of layoffs was 33 lawyers and 51 staff on April 20, 2009.

In the Herbies article, Legal Week reports other layoffs in London, some of which we’re still sorting out for reporting:

Clifford Chance also recently announced London job cuts, with up to 13 finance and capital markets associates at risk [ed: our coverage here], while Linklaters has made a number of back office job cuts in recent months. Allen & Overy and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer have both stated they have no redundancy plans.

Meanwhile, the London branch of Mayer Brown plans to cut headcount by 20.  Mayer Brown has (had) more than 1,600 lawyers worldwide.

A spokesperson for Mayer Brown said in a statement: “We continue to look carefully at our business to ensure that we have as strong a platform as possible on which to build. We have made the difficult decision that a small reduction in headcount is necessary which may result in less than 20 people from the London office leaving the firm. This includes a small number of fee earners along with support staff. All those potentially impacted by this decision have been notified and will be provided with support and assistance at this time.”

Mayer Brown has had five previous rounds of layoffs reported:

• 28 lawyers and 47 staff on April 8, 2010
• 12 lawyers, including four partners, on December 17, 2009
• 45 lawyers and 90 staff on April 2, 2009
• 23 lawyers and 32 staff on March 20, 2009, and
• 33 lawyers on November 20, 2008

That’s a grand total of 330: 146 lawyers and 184 staff (assuming “small number of fee earners” is five and the balance staff).

They’ve just cracked into the Top 10 List – bumping previous #10 Eversheds.

Legal Week udpated us on the big firms; The Lawyer does so for some smaller firms, which don’t qualify for the Layoff Tracker, but may be additional canaries in the coal mine:

A number of firms have announced redundancy programmes in the past weeks, including most recently Herbert Smith (30 April 2012), Shoosmiths (3 May 2012), Maclay Murray & Spens (4 May 2012) and Dundas & Wilson (2 April 2012).

Stateside, Baker & McKenzie’s layoffs in San Diego and Bingham’s layoff of staff are the most notable so far of 2012.

Again we ask, is this a trend or an aberration?

[Also, we're going to continue with the Heller precedent until we're convinced otherwise as far as the impending layoffs at Dewey & LeBoeuf goes.  We said then and say now that those are "complete failures of a firm, not selective layoffs."  We recognize that that can lead to anomalous results, like including Dewey's March layoffs.]

So it’s officially on.  We’ve been quiet about the whole Dewey imploding thing.  In part, it’s because of other commitments, but it’s also because until a couple of weeks ago, we really thought this was going to end up being more like White & Case’s troubles of 2009-2010, or Cadwalader’s 2008-09, than Howrey.

Those three firms pretty much covered the spectrum of likely outcomes:

Cadwalader saw an exodus (or cleaned house, depending on whom you believe), then really turned things around.

White & Case got picked over, by Latham in particular, but righted the ship.  Unlike Cadwalader, which appears to have come out stronger, W&C looks to have ended up in a similar place to where it started.

Howrey was obviously a disaster (and let’s not forget that firm’s crass, transparent attempts to pretend they were cutting weak partners, not being ditched by anyone who could find a decent place to land).

So, yeah… We thought D&L was big enough to plow through this.

Then we thought it was just the legacy LeBoeuf people leaving, which hinted that this was more of a failed merger than a failed firm.

Then the floodgates opened…

The Death Watch has begun.  Dewey & LeBoeuf is really looking like the next member of the BigLaw Dead Pool (AmLaw 100 firms that have failed).  What do you think?  Any chance this can be salvaged?

Interesting Links:

• Dewey & LeBoeuf Partners Told to Find Other Work (WSJ)
• Law Firm Ends Talks with Dewey (WSJ – Greenberg Traurig passing, info about restructuring debt)
• Dewey London partners hold talks over wind-down of UK arm (Legalweek)
• Dewey Have Any Shot of Surviving? Internal Memo Urges Partners To Seek ‘Alternative Opportunities’ (ATL – includes firm memo)
• Dewey & LeBoeuf Aims to Avoid Bankruptcy, Bienenstock Says (Marty knows a little about bk – Bloomberg BusinessWeek)
• Spinning Dewey’s Heroes (Belly of the Beast – one of my favorite pieces on the subject, hits on the cult of personality and the worker bees)
• A Paralegal’s Lament (ATL – inside scoop from the trenches)
• Is Dewey Partner Henry Bunsow the Angel of Death? (Thomson Reuters – Bunsow’s previous tenures include Brobeck and Howrey, which are no more, and Townsend, which has basically been merged out of existence.  When we read this, we couldn’t help but think that he’s a symptom of the problem – a high-profile guy who almost certainly got huge signing bonuses and guarantees.  Firms that did that, whether it was justified for Bunsow or not, were playing with fire.)
• A few key players may determine Dewey’s fate (Thomson Reuters – It’s three weeks old now, but this might as well be a bingo scorecard of defections that will really hurt)
• Dewey Denies It’s the Source of Sex Story on Former Partner (The Careerist – One of a zillion links about Altorelli’s whole sordid thing with the Russian spy.)
• Dewey unveils incentive scheme to stem partner efforts (LegalWeek – Plan didn’t work, and has been since reversed, doors are open)
• American Lawyer to Revise Dewey’s Financials (DealBook – The numbers were made up anyway, so what’s the point of restating?)

Major law firms have laid off more than 15,000 people, almost 6,000 of which are lawyers.  Given that sample size, we have to believe that there are a few who would elicit a little more sympathy for the rest than Jordan Harbinger.

Harbinger is actually really interesting, and is making lemons out of lemonade.  He’s a blogger and a talking head about dating advice for man.  We have no idea how crowded that field is, but since he’s part of Kevin Smith’s SModcast network (we’re big fans of Mr. Smith) and is on SiriusXM, we’re guessing Harbinger is pretty good at what he does now.

Unfortunately, he’s also an example of the horde of lawyers who went to law school because they had nothing better to do.

Why do we single him out?

He is one of Business Insider’s 10 Faces Behind The Incredible Law School Underemployment Crisis.

Harbinger had applied to law school on a whim, and ended up attending University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, one of the nation’s top law schools.

“I didn’t know that there were law school rankings,” he says. “Everyone is obsessed with these things. I found these after I got into Michigan. I had no idea. I figured Harvard law was top dog or something, but I thought who cares, what’s the big deal?”

Is there anything more annoying than someone who aimlessly traipses into one of the top programs?  That’s not exactly the singlemindedness of purpose we’d like to see in motivated BigLaw associates, is it?

He was laid off within a year.  Unfortunately, he was laid off from Thacher Proffitt, so it doesn’t say much about his own personal abilities; they laid off everyone in a futile effort to stay afloat.  He summered at Linklaters, which also had massive layoffs but at least they survived.  So he either chose the wrong firm or got no-offered.  Fellow profilee Larry Hardcastle also had bad luck – he summered at Drinker Biddle, but they too didn’t take on many of their summers in 2009.

Many others express the platitudes or fallacies so prevalent in the “should I go to law school?” discussion.  For example, this gem from an ESPN producer:

Still, Deskalo says he is glad he went to law school, which he says taught him how to think differently about situations and also helped him hone his skills as a journalist.

The old “learn how to think” gem.  Sigh.

At least some of the others are more sympathetic, including a woman living at poverty level while trying to build a healthcare practice.

If nothing else, it’s an interesting cross-section of recent law school grads.  But at the end of it all, we just come away exasperated at how little planning went into some of these folks’ decisions.

Way behind on a bunch of stuff around here due to work.  Always looking for help, so please reach out if you want to volunteer.  Need content, curators for the trackers, etc.  Oh, and sponsors.  Surely, some smart company wants to reach our distinguished, successful, and astonishingly good-looking audience?  The race between spousal patience and the blog’s financial independence is heating up.

We love comments.  Commenters always give the best scoops and most-interesting follow up information (see the post before this, for example).  We put the recent comments widget back in the sidebar in the hopes that it will spur on further conversation.

Also, the Lateral Tracker is constantly being updated.  We’re over 3,000 entries now, and they’re almost all BigLaw.  There’s a bit of a backlog on entries and cleanup, but it’s all in the works.  Thinking about doing a Kickstarter to raise money for some development of some cool ideas we’d like to implement.

Sorry for the radio silence.  Real life has been kicking our asses.

The Legal Profession Blog drew our attention to the revokation of one lawyer’s admission to the New York Bar.

We love the blog, even though it usually deals with non-BigLaw issues – but when it does, we’ve found some winners, e.g., The Bad Fiancee, the overbilling Mayer Brown temp, the moonlighting Holland & Knight lawyer, the laid-off DLA student-loan deadbeat, the Seyfarth Shaw/Schiff Hardin associates who were two-thirds of a “Devil’s Threesome,” and Loren Friedman, who has been an unending font of schadenfreude.

Before we continue, it’s important to note that as best we can tell, every single one of those persons was fired or disassociated from the firms.

Anyway, when LPB refers to New York lawyers, we tend to click through.  Right away, our spidey sense started tingling that there might be a BigLaw connection – probably from the mention that the respondent to the disciplinary proceedings also maintained an office in London.

Turns out Ann McAllister Olivarius (pictured, right) has had her admission to the NY Bar revoked on account of some irregularities in her 2008 application.

Read all about it in the order or in the LPB summary.

Here’s the BigLaw connection.

According to her LinkedIn Profile, Olivarius’s experience includes (emphasis added):

Having initially developed corporate finance skills at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, her legal career includes service as General Counsel, CEO and Director of Scientific Programs of a medical foundation with assets valued at over $100 million (in 1991), and as a legal and strategic financial advisor for Perot Systems and Computer Memories, Inc. Before founding her own firm, Dr. Olivarius ran the Corporate Department at Shearman & Sterling’s Washington, DC office.

Bearing in mind the findings of the NY disciplinary authorities, she may be stretching the truth here as well (part of the problem with her application was that she tried to cover up the circumstances under which she had previously involuntarily left what must have been the Goldman Sachs job and some foundation work.

She also claims some impressive academic chops:

Dr. Olivarius graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Yale College, Class of 1977. As a Rhodes Scholar, she wrote a prize-winning doctorate in Economics from Nuffield College, Oxford, before becoming the first person to complete the combined five-year degree from Yale School of Management and Yale Law School in three years, receiving highest honors.

Apparently, she was also involved in a case called Alexander v. Yale, which was reportedly the “first use of Title IX in charges of sexual harassment against an educational institution.”  Unlike the other plaintiffs, who alleged actual harassment,

Ann Olivarius alleged that the absence of a procedure for complaining about sexual harassment forced her to expend her own time and money on helping fellow students who had been sexually harassed, and that in the course of providing that help she was threatened by individuals whom she was investigating, and that Yale failed to protect her from those individuals.

What’s going on with this woman?

Interesting links:

• Wikipedia entry!  (Can’t even imaging how this meets the arbitrary threshold for relevance, but there it is)
• NY Times wedding announcement
• Profile at her firm
• Yale School of Management alumni profile

Seven lawyers and twelve (minimum) staff getting severance packages.

A spokesman for Baker & McKenzie said that partner Colin Murray will relocate to the firm’s San Francisco office, as will partner Chuck Dick until his retirement this summer. Former partner Ali Mojdehi has now left the firm.

According to a filtered search on the website today, that leaves partners Brian Arbetter (who splits time with Chicago and is presumably unaffected) and Kandace Watson unaccounted for.  We don’t name laid-off associates, btw.

In the Layoff  Tracker, we have reports of 342 people (127 lawyers, 215 staff) laid off by Baker & McKenzie in seven rounds going back to February, 2009.  That puts the firm at

• #9 in the overall layoff rankings
• unranked for total lawyers laid off (13 shy of #10 Orrick)
• #8 on staff layoffs, swapping rankings with Eversheds
• tied for #3 with Dewey on rounds of layoffs by major law firms

Things are certainly heating up, with recent layoffs by some other pretty substantial firms: Clifford Chance; Dewey & LeBoeuf; and Bingham.  All those since February 28, by the way.

Total for the year is now 204, of which 95 were lawyers.  How much more do you think we’ll see?

Thirteen capital markets and finance associates in London facing redundancy.  The action is reportedly based on low attrition – which means they’re either replacing lower-performing junior and midlevel associates with untested fresh meat, or pandering to their relationships with the law schools by keeping up new hiring.

The firm has now laid off a reported total of 457 people.  201 lawyers and 256 staff.  That extends its lead over #4 DLA Piper (440) in the law firms’ overall layoff rankings.

Just four more lawyers and Clifford Chance could overtake Allen & Overy for #2 on the ranking of firms that have laid off the most attorneys.  CC needs 23 more to catch #1, White & Case.

No effect on the rankings for staff layoffs, where Clifford Chance is #10, just two people behind Baker & McKenzie.

This is the firm’s 14th reported round (go to the Layoff Tracker and filter by the firm’s name for the full list).  That’s #1 by a long shot.  DLA Piper has had ten reported rounds of layoffs for second place.

Perkins Coie is jumping in with its startup clients and giving the freemium model a try. For those who don’t know, it’s basically a fancy word VCs use to describe companies that give away a functional but bare bones product or service in order to generate scale in the hopes that some segment will convert to paying customers for premium features.

In the BigLaw context, you get “startupPerColator” (annoying punctuation in the original – apparently they’re also glomming onto the no initial cap trend (is that even still a trend?) while highlighting the Per[kins]Co[ie] in the portmanteau).

The site offers standard docs, tips of the week, and of course, an exhortation to call a real lawyer to get some help.

The thing we like about it is that entrepreneurs, by their very nature, are, or at least think they are, smart do-it-yourself-ers.  This is a good way to get a nibble from folks trying to save themselves some of their very scarce early capital.

What do you think?