Law Practice Management
Practitioners Play Musical Chairs Amidst Biggest Bankruptcy Boom in 20 Years
Posted Jan 12, 2009 5:54 PM CST
By Martha Neil
As experts predict the biggest boom in bankruptcy matters in 20 years, the practice niche is a hot hiring area.
Among those who have suddenly jumped the law firm fence to potentially greener pastures elsewhere are O'Melveny & Myers restructuring co-chair Michael Sage, who moved to Dechert on Monday, and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft restructuring co-chair Bruce Zirinsky, who departed last week for Greenberg Traurig, reports the Am Law Daily.
Sage, who bills at $895 per hour, according to a bankruptcy case filing last year, came to O'Melveny in 2007 from Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. He moved to Stroock from Dewey Ballantine in 2002.
Leading to the legal business boom is a growing tsunami of troubled companies: Not only are companies in a broad array of businesses suddenly having to shift gears to deal with the new economic reality after a worldwide economic crisis hit last year, their suppliers are in the same situation, Reuters reports.
"I think what's unprecedented is the confluence of so many (companies) starting to have their issues, while at the same time, their creditors have their own significant challenges," says partner James Sprayregen of Kirkland & Ellis.
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Comments
B. McLeod
Jan 13, 2009 1:36 AM CST
The most common score for “musical chairs” is “Pop Goes the Weasel.” (How very, very fitting).
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Allen Sheketovits
Jan 13, 2009 6:29 AM CST
I think McLeod is right. In the last 2 years, I’ve met more than a few bankruptcy lawyers whose weasels I would love to pop.
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BC
Jan 16, 2009 7:21 AM CST
While bankruptcy is a “hot hiring” area, what many firms are doing is transferring associates over from some of the underworked practice groups (litigation, mergers and acquisitions, etc.) to do bankruptcy. I wouldn’t call this “hot hiring” in fact, it’s the opposite. The firms are looking within to fill their needs, not outside lawyers. All the ABA has done to support their “hot hiring” theory is cite to two co-chairs of big law bankruptcy practice switching over to another big law bankruptcy firm. Hardly “hot hiring”; people move around firms all the time.
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Hadley V. Baxendale
Jan 16, 2009 9:11 AM CST
To be an effective bankruptcy lawyer you have to be able to handle litigation and transactions, simultaneously. When bankruptcy is up, litigators and M&A’s move to that area. When it’s down, they return. But in the law firm culture of not training lawyers to handle matters outside of their department, most are inept at handling BOTH types of work and are thus ineffective at bankruptcy. Those of us (BK lawyers) who do both are the ones the clients look to.
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