Above the Law is getting numerous tips about “stealth” layoffs at Los Angeles-based 2,100-lawyer firm Latham & Watkins, but the world’s fifth largest firm denies there are any layoffs, except for ordinary firings in the wake of year-end reviews.
Consistent with our standard practice at the end of each year, we have completed our associate review process. We counsel our associates at the completion of our review process each year, and in those conferences discuss topics such as job performance, compensation and career tracks. Our decisions relating to associate departures were performance related and part of our usual year-end process, not part of an economic layoff.
My son was laid off recently by LW and it was a moment of celebration for his father and I. There is nothing worse than working hard your entire life to achieve success and then being hired by a firm that cannot provide enough work for its associates. It was demoralizing for him to go to work everyday and have nothing to do. It was a crime for LW to hire people they could not keep busy and then blame them because there is not enough work. It was a terrible experience for him. After working so hard all of his life, the days at LW were meaningless. We are thankful for the lay-off and angry that so much of his time was wasted and so many of his hopes dashed. They never discovered what he could do or what he could be. And they demoralized him in the process.
I’d like to add that he did do over 1000 hours of pro bono work but — by defnition — that gave him little usable experience in the market. And having run a business all my life, I cannot imagine hiring anyone without recognizing a duty to OFFER them work to do. If they don’t do it or do it poorly, get rid of them. They told him they liked his work product — there just wasn’t enough of it. He went there because he could learn how to be a corporate attorney. He wasn’t a rainmaker. He didn’t know enough when he started to bring in clients. To blame an out-of-school first year attorney for not bringing in clients is insane and ridiculous. Experience breeds confidence and confidence breeds clients. It is a failure of management that they hired people they could not teach and groom for their futures. As a business person, I find their hiring practices as dishonest as the studios buying scripts they never intend to use. They hurt good people and it is immoral. If they didn’t have the work, they should have been honest in the first place.
Like everyone else, he assumed he would be working 10-12 hours per day — that was part of the bargain. Begging for work and seeking pro bono work is just not what one expects from a 2200-person law firm.
I believe that they failed their employees and unfairly deprived hard-working young people of the training that they needed to be marketable when they were discarded.
By the way, the good pay was great for him and he was smart enough to save nearly all of it. But it is insulting to believe that unearned income is of the same value as a meaningful day.