Chadbourne & Parke Freezes Hiring of Laterals, Nonlawyers

Chadbourne & Parke informed its lawyers and staffers in a memo yesterday that some of them may have to be reassigned to busier practice areas because of a hiring freeze.

The freeze won’t affect the firm’s 2009 summer associate class, the National Law Journal reports. It applies only to lateral hires of associates and nonlawyer staffers.

Above the Law first posted the memo. Firm spokesman Andrew Blum told the NLJ that the hiring freeze will continue “until it becomes clear the economy is improving.”

The memo also said the law firm is delaying much of a planned technology upgrade and will be issuing new guidelines to control travel and other expenses.

It stresses that the firm “is doing better than a number of our peers. That, in part, is due to the fact that we are not overly dependent on any one practice area, such as capital markets. Nor were we a firm with a significant practice involving the various financial instruments which have now become ‘toxic,’ as were a number of other firms.”