A classic case of greed. Back when I was working this was our go to law firm. Imagine competing law firms offering $20 million pay packages.

Yeah, stunning fall. Hard to believe these firms can charge two thousand an hour or more.

Tempus Edax Rerum said:

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Yeah, stunning fall. Hard to believe these firms can charge two thousand an hour or more.

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Not at Weil, but there are some tax partners charging almost double that. The cheapest partner at my firm is ~$2000/hour and I'm over $1700/hour as a senior associate. Rates are high but institutional clients don't care. A $8-9 million bill on a billion dollar IPO is a a rounding error and still a fraction of what the IBs make for doing a lot less work.

Weil was victim of not moving with the times and keeping their top earners happy enough to stay.

Call it greed, but I cannot blame someone who could get paid 2-3x at another firm guaranteed for 3 years for leaving and chasing the cash.

Understand but I'm old and from the era where working for a firm for 35-40 years was fun. Nowadays it is like NIL in professional ranks.

Aliceinbubbleland said:

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Understand but I'm old and from the era where working for a firm for 35-40 years was fun. Nowadays it is like NIL in professional ranks.

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It's been that way for 20yrs. I knew it was time for me to exit corporate America when time came that in the Tech business which I was, if you weren't moving companies every year or 2 , you were stale!

Aliceinbubbleland said:

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Understand but I'm old and from the era where working for a firm for 35-40 years was fun. Nowadays it is like NIL in professional ranks.

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Weil and several other white should firms are my customers ... have consistently heard this feedback about how much the culture has changed.

I think it is funny that Millenials constantly seem to accuse Baby Boomers of being selfish vs. the Millenials being more "community minded" ... the reality is Millenials are very selfish and have relatively low sense of loyalty and duty ... they just lack the self-awareness to realize it ... most of their talks of "community" and altruism seems more like virtue signaling.

Harrison Bergeron said:

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Aliceinbubbleland said:

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Understand but I'm old and from the era where working for a firm for 35-40 years was fun. Nowadays it is like NIL in professional ranks.

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Weil and several other white should firms are my customers ... have consistently heard this feedback about how much the culture has changed.

I think it is funny that Millenials constantly seem to accuse Baby Boomers of being selfish vs. the Millenials being more "community minded" ... the reality is Millenials are very selfish and have relatively low sense of loyalty and duty ... they just lack the self-awareness to realize it ... most of their talks of "community" and altruism seems more like virtue signaling.

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Respectfully what are you talking about? It is boomer and Gen X senior / managing partners with huge books of business (some have combined billings of 60+ million a year thanks to large institutional clients and blanket mandates) that are taking the $15-20MM + year offers and moving. Some of the younger partners (who are millenials) might be landing guaranteed $3-5MM / year gigs if they have the right connections and some good relationships (or a firm is desprate), but no one under 50 is commanding the kind of guaranteed comp that ultimately killed Weil unless they are either insanely lucky or have a sweet connection to a major company that uses outside counsel a ton.

The legal market changed for good 8-10 years ago and it has only accelerated. Life time firm tenure is basically unheard of now, and many firms are moving to milk as much as they can for as long as they can. Call it the Kirkland effect for those that know.

Weil sticking with their lock step partner comp model for too long coupled with generally being cheap af with letting their offices and partners outside of NYC build teams is what drug them down. They were a PE powerhouse for a long, long time, but that bled out over the last 8-10 years and now firms like KE, STB & Latham are clearly ahead of them, and many others are doing as much or more PE work. We're also in a BK lul, so the matters that kept a lot of Weil lawyers busy and profitable has pulled back (e.g., for a long time the Houston Weil office was a BK outpost for their clients that were energy companies/wanted to file in SDTX or for local counsel engagements - Weil "tried" to build a legit energy group there 3-4 years ago and almost all of those partners are now gone as Weil would not give them the resources to recruit the necessary associate bench to actually handle a profitable workload. The did the same thing 6-7 years ago in Dallas and all of those partners are gone as well).

Aliceinbubbleland said:

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Understand but I'm old and from the era where working for a firm for 35-40 years was fun. Nowadays it is like NIL in professional ranks.

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Yes and no. The steady increase of billable rates, and the rise of huge institutional clients has led to partners with books of business that easily exceed $50 million in AR/WIP a year.

Firms may take a flyer on a younger partner for 3-5 million a year for 3 years to see if they can hack it, but if they aren't making the firm 3-4X that by end of year three they are out the door or taking a pay cut. There are certainly some lawyers that have made a good earning career out of moving every 2-3 years because they actually cannot maintain a good book, but that is a hard life to live.

303Bear said:

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Harrison Bergeron said:

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Aliceinbubbleland said:

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Understand but I'm old and from the era where working for a firm for 35-40 years was fun. Nowadays it is like NIL in professional ranks.

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Weil and several other white should firms are my customers ... have consistently heard this feedback about how much the culture has changed.

I think it is funny that Millenials constantly seem to accuse Baby Boomers of being selfish vs. the Millenials being more "community minded" ... the reality is Millenials are very selfish and have relatively low sense of loyalty and duty ... they just lack the self-awareness to realize it ... most of their talks of "community" and altruism seems more like virtue signaling.

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Respectfully what are you talking about? It is boomer and Gen X senior / managing partners with huge books of business (some have combined billings of 60+ million a year thanks to large institutional clients and blanket mandates) that are taking the $15-20MM + year offers and moving. Some of the younger partners (who are millenials) might be landing guaranteed $3-5MM / year gigs if they have the right connections and some good relationships (or a firm is desprate), but no one under 50 is commanding the kind of guaranteed comp that ultimately killed Weil unless they are either insanely lucky or have a sweet connection to a major company that uses outside counsel a ton.

The legal market changed for good 8-10 years ago and it has only accelerated. Life time firm tenure is basically unheard of now, and many firms are moving to milk as much as they can for as long as they can. Call it the Kirkland effect for those that know.

Weil sticking with their lock step partner comp model for too long coupled with generally being cheap af with letting their offices and partners outside of NYC build teams is what drug them down. They were a PE powerhouse for a long, long time, but that bled out over the last 8-10 years and now firms like KE, STB & Latham are clearly ahead of them, and many others are doing as much or more PE work. We're also in a BK lul, so the matters that kept a lot of Weil lawyers busy and profitable has pulled back (e.g., for a long time the Houston Weil office was a BK outpost for their clients that were energy companies/wanted to file in SDTX or for local counsel engagements - Weil "tried" to build a legit energy group there 3-4 years ago and almost all of those partners are now gone as Weil would not give them the resources to recruit the necessary associate bench to actually handle a profitable workload. The did the same thing 6-7 years ago in Dallas and all of those partners are gone as well).

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Do you think Millenials have a strong sense of loyalty to their employers? Do they have longer average tenures at their employers than other generations? Do you think Baby Boomers were behind the change 8-10 years ago?

(My contacts seemed to indicate "generally" it was younger attorneys that moved more than their peers, but I am definitely not an expert ... just cocktail conversation)