Law Firms
Cadwalader Loses 7 of 11 Partners in UK Office
Posted Jan 14, 2009 10:54 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft has lost seven partners in its London office after disclosing that partner profits at the firm have dropped by 30 percent.
Legal Week says “it is understood” that the partners are leaping to Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker. The publication calls the move “a massive setback” for Cadwalader. The firm only has four partners remaining in London and may be closing the office, the story says.
Firm chairman Christopher White and former chairman Bob Link flew to London in an attempt to stop the defections, according to the story. Among the departing partners is Michelle Duncan, the head of the London office. Others work in the areas of restructuring, capital markets and real estate finance.
Cadwalader’s U.S. restructuring co-chair, Bruce Zirinsky, also is leaving the firm. He moved last week to Greenberg Traurig. Moving with him is restructuring partner John Bae, the National Law Journal reports.
Average profits per equity partner at Cadwalader fell 30 percent to $1.88 million for 2008, down from $2.725 million the year before. Despite the drop, Link told the Am Law Daily that $1.88 million per partner is “not too shabby.”
More on Cadwalader from ABAJournal.com:
Ex-Cadwalader MP Named to Rebuild Firm’s Troubled London Office
Lawyer Trainees at Cadwalader’s London Office Won’t Get Job Offers
- How B of A’s GC Got Fired: Leave Now, and Leave Your BlackBerry Behind
- Schools Ranked by 'Super Lawyers' Produced
- Law Firm Price Wars Break Out as Some Try ‘Loss Leader’ Bids for Work
- Five Questions for Law Firms Abandoning Lockstep Compensation
- Judge Jails 2 Attorneys for Contempt in 4 Days
- Reed Smith Will Ask Nonequity Partners to Pony Up Possibly 15% of Pay
- Court Deputy Ordered to Apologize or Face Jail After Taking Lawyer's Paperwork
- Skadden Jumps on the Bonus Bandwagon
- ABA Executive Director Resigns
- Nasty Attitude to Co-Worker, Naughty Word in E-Mail Cost 2 Their Jobs
Should Supreme Court Justices Be Able to Review News Accounts Before Publication?
Comments
B. McLeod
Jan 14, 2009 12:51 PM CST
Cadwalader’s draggin’.
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across the pond
Jan 15, 2009 10:04 AM CST
there is no loyalty at big law. whoever pays you most money is where you work
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Dies Irae
Jan 16, 2009 8:50 AM CST
Sounds worse than mere decimation to me (although that particular word was only used in the email alert, not this article).
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Kevin
Jan 16, 2009 8:54 AM CST
Wow, those poor guys. How do they manage to even feed their families on 1.88 million a year? No wonder they moved! They should look into getting public assistance to help them through this tough time.
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CM
Jan 16, 2009 9:47 AM CST
Actually, decimation of 11 partners would mean 1.1 (round to 2!) would be left, so the office was not decimated.
Aside from that admittedly ticky point, GOOD GRIEF. People who carp at $1.88MM per year are exactly the ones who give us (lawyers) a bad name.
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B. McLeod
Jan 16, 2009 10:03 AM CST
No. 1.1 would be gone. “Decimation” was a punishment for unit misconduct in the Roman legions. Every tenth man would be killed.
So Dies Irae is correct. The London office was much more than “decimated.”
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B. McLeod
Jan 16, 2009 10:07 AM CST
Actually, when I think about it, under the Roman practice, 2 would be gone. In a line of 11, an officer would kill the first and last, because you can’t really kill a person fractionally (and the Romans tended to overdo things anyway).
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AndytheLawyer
Jan 16, 2009 11:02 AM CST
The Romans would have been hard pressed to even express fractional killing, since they dind’t use Arabic numerals or decimals.
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H. Allen
Jan 16, 2009 11:03 AM CST
Decimation, in Roman terms, involved taking a unit which had lost a battle (that’s your “unit misconduct”), counting off every 10th soldier in the unit, and then all the #10s had to fight the rest of the unit until one side was dead. We don’t know anything like that today, do we?
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Texas Law
Jan 16, 2009 11:26 AM CST
Re, #9, H. Allen, no, what is like that today?
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H. Allen
Jan 16, 2009 12:35 PM CST
Re #10, I do not know of anything comparable. That wasn’t a trick question. But since you asked, TL, do you think anything is comparable?
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public interest lawyer
Jan 16, 2009 1:13 PM CST
I was skimming this article, wondering why I even bother to read the ABA Journal anymore, since I am tired of reading about more poor, poor biglaw firms whose first-year associates make more in a month than I make in a year. Then, in the comments, I learned an interesting new factoid about the origins and true meaning of the word “decimated.” Thanks, fellow Journal commenters, for making this useless magazine slightly more worthwhile.
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Andrew W. Cole
Jan 16, 2009 2:24 PM CST
My background is in math - where I (very) briefly studied Egyptian and Roman arithmetic - Romans did have fractions but based them on a base-12 instead of a base-10 system and used dots (.) to indicate amounts. For example a coin that was one/fourth of the base coin would have three dots (...) on it. Not usable for high level arithmetic or any other type of mathematical research but functional - as the Romans always were. The Egyptians, not so much, their fractions were sequential additions, that is 5/12’s would be 1/3 + 0/4 + 0/5 + ... + 1/12. Or that’s what I recall anyway. So decimation would be a military term while finance would be duodecimation or the elimination of 1/12 of the group. In this case only one $1.8M employees would be killed, er transfer to another firm. Much more humane.
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Walter Heiser
Jan 17, 2009 11:28 PM CST
Have been reading Plutarch’s “Lives” and don’t believe Poster 9 is correct on the Roman decimation penalty. Poster 6, appears to be correct. There was no “gladiator” style battle fought under this penalty. Rather for mutiny or panic/cowardice in battle, the commander would select by lot 1 out of every 10 members of the offending subunit (e.g. cohort). The spared 9 members would then stone the unlucky 10th to death. This was an ancient but rarely used penalty. Crassus revived it during the war against the Spartacus led rebels. The last recorded instance occurred during the reign of Diocletian. Poster 9 may have been watching too many Hollywood epics—always guilty of gross distortion of history.(The film “Gladiator” a prime example of a nonsense “history” of the reign and death of Commodus.)
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Ann
Jan 18, 2009 9:55 AM CST
I am disappointed! If any of those laywers want to come and take my job where I am supposed to get a cost of living increase to finally put me up over the $50K mark, they are sure welcome to it! I would happily settle for $1.8 m per year. Hell, I could even afford a new car! What are these goofballs thinking? Greed is really a bad thing.
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Karl Marksen
Jan 19, 2009 10:07 PM CST
I should shed a tear for these men? Pffuey av dein eppish! I refuse to feel bad for these yutzes. I think we should all make no more than $100K before the tax man takes 80%. that would allow for a reallocation of weath.
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Edward
Jan 20, 2009 9:05 AM CST
Diocletian is also notable for remarking, when his former colleague the Emperor Maximian tried to call him out of retirement, “If you could show the cabbage that I planted with my own hands to your emperor, he definitely wouldn’t dare suggest that I replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed.”
Not a sentiment, I suspect, that many partners would share.
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H. Allen
Jan 21, 2009 1:50 PM CST
Re #14 (Mr. Heiser), actually my admittedly limited understanding of the meaning of decimation is derived from a conversation I had with my dad (who is much better read than I) years ago. His knowledge of trivia is astounding, but I wouldn’t quibble with you if you say that’s the way it was. Dad (not an ancient Roman, of course) recalled that the 1/10 of the batallion that was called out (at random from the other 9/10) had a chance to defend themselves. It was the intent that this 1/10 be wiped out, but if they fought valiantly…. Thus, it was the setting aside of a tenth of a batallion where the entire unit had done poorly, and in that manner, it was a form of discipline imposed on the entire batallion.
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Don Wickham
Jan 22, 2009 6:14 PM CST
After 50 years with this J.D. degree I never heard of anything that made me more ashamed of my profession:The outrageous vain greed that is illustrated indicates a complete lack of professionalism. It is a story usually associated with vermin, not the law.
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