Does biglaw "blacklist" stealthed associates? Forum

[M&Abiglaw]

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[Anonymous User]

Yeah, doesn't "stealthed" refer to the practice of firms laying off associated in 2008/9 and pretending they were not (by, for instance, pretending they were actually just firing people for performance issues)?

I don't know if "stealthed" as a term pre-existed the Great Recession, but it certainly still occurs. It's just a firm letting people go for economic reasons, but pretending it's because of performance issues, and it happens all the time. Even in good times when the market is busy, some partner may go to another firm, and now suddenly there's associates in practice area "X" with nothing to do. The wrinkle is that people who actually might have "performance issues", be that weird behavior or low billing or both, can also be let go, so from the outside you don't know why a person left, and I think in many cases even the associate doesn't know for sure why they were let go. I guess being "eased out" or "managed out" is that practice of being asked to go, whereas being sleathed is just the firm pretending they have a reason to let you go other than the fact they can't utilize you. I think this pandemic period is just weird because people were stealthed early on when the market froze up, but it was followed by a screwy busy period, which I suspect hasn't really happened in the careers of most biglaw practitioners.

[almostperfectt]

Yeah, doesn't "stealthed" refer to the practice of firms laying off associated in 2008/9 and pretending they were not (by, for instance, pretending they were actually just firing people for performance issues)?

I don't know if "stealthed" as a term pre-existed the Great Recession, but it certainly still occurs. It's just a firm letting people go for economic reasons, but pretending it's because of performance issues, and it happens all the time. Even in good times when the market is busy, some partner may go to another firm, and now suddenly there's associates in practice area "X" with nothing to do. The wrinkle is that people who actually might have "performance issues", be that weird behavior or low billing or both, can also be let go, so from the outside you don't know why a person left, and I think in many cases even the associate doesn't know for sure why they were let go. I guess being "eased out" or "managed out" is that practice of being asked to go, whereas being sleathed is just the firm pretending they have a reason to let you go other than the fact they can't utilize you. I think this pandemic period is just weird because people were stealthed early on when the market froze up, but it was followed by a screwy busy period, which I suspect hasn't really happened in the careers of most biglaw practitioners.

Then why would a firm blacklist a stealthed associate? If anything they would whitelist that associate (telling other firms that they are actually fine at their job so no concerns about hiring them) to avoid potential slander lawsuit.

This thread is v confusing. I think the better question is does biglaw blacklist fired associates generally.

[Anonymous User]

Yeah, doesn't "stealthed" refer to the practice of firms laying off associated in 2008/9 and pretending they were not (by, for instance, pretending they were actually just firing people for performance issues)?

I don't know if "stealthed" as a term pre-existed the Great Recession, but it certainly still occurs. It's just a firm letting people go for economic reasons, but pretending it's because of performance issues, and it happens all the time. Even in good times when the market is busy, some partner may go to another firm, and now suddenly there's associates in practice area "X" with nothing to do. The wrinkle is that people who actually might have "performance issues", be that weird behavior or low billing or both, can also be let go, so from the outside you don't know why a person left, and I think in many cases even the associate doesn't know for sure why they were let go. I guess being "eased out" or "managed out" is that practice of being asked to go, whereas being sleathed is just the firm pretending they have a reason to let you go other than the fact they can't utilize you. I think this pandemic period is just weird because people were stealthed early on when the market froze up, but it was followed by a screwy busy period, which I suspect hasn't really happened in the careers of most biglaw practitioners.

Then why would a firm blacklist a stealthed associate? If anything they would whitelist that associate (telling other firms that they are actually fine at their job so no concerns about hiring them) to avoid potential slander lawsuit.

This thread is v confusing. I think the better question is does biglaw blacklist fired associates generally.

I thought the answer above was pretty clear. Sometimes people are asked to leave for performance reasons, sometimes people are asked to leave for firm management/economic reasons (a practice area cools off, etc.), and sometimes associates just leave of their own accord. Since biglaw firms rarely flat out fire someone, it can be impossible to tell from the outside why Associate Alex is leaving his firm. And since the world is tiny, it's likely that Partner Bob at the firm where Alex is interviewing knows people at Alex's old firm, so Bob may very well call up his buddies and ask their impressions of Alex. I would think most partners wouldn't jump at the opportunity to talk shit about poor Alex (unless he was really that horrendous), but a lukewarm response can be just as telling. And unless someone is a complete lunatic, they're not going to make up false stories about Alex, so slander is not an issue. So, is there a blacklist? No. Is there an informal grapevine whereby most things can be known with a few calls? Yes.

[almostperfectt]

Yeah, doesn't "stealthed" refer to the practice of firms laying off associated in 2008/9 and pretending they were not (by, for instance, pretending they were actually just firing people for performance issues)?

I don't know if "stealthed" as a term pre-existed the Great Recession, but it certainly still occurs. It's just a firm letting people go for economic reasons, but pretending it's because of performance issues, and it happens all the time. Even in good times when the market is busy, some partner may go to another firm, and now suddenly there's associates in practice area "X" with nothing to do. The wrinkle is that people who actually might have "performance issues", be that weird behavior or low billing or both, can also be let go, so from the outside you don't know why a person left, and I think in many cases even the associate doesn't know for sure why they were let go. I guess being "eased out" or "managed out" is that practice of being asked to go, whereas being sleathed is just the firm pretending they have a reason to let you go other than the fact they can't utilize you. I think this pandemic period is just weird because people were stealthed early on when the market froze up, but it was followed by a screwy busy period, which I suspect hasn't really happened in the careers of most biglaw practitioners.

Then why would a firm blacklist a stealthed associate? If anything they would whitelist that associate (telling other firms that they are actually fine at their job so no concerns about hiring them) to avoid potential slander lawsuit.

This thread is v confusing. I think the better question is does biglaw blacklist fired associates generally.

I thought the answer above was pretty clear. Sometimes people are asked to leave for performance reasons, sometimes people are asked to leave for firm management/economic reasons (a practice area cools off, etc.), and sometimes associates just leave of their own accord. Since biglaw firms rarely flat out fire someone, it can be impossible to tell from the outside why Associate Alex is leaving his firm. And since the world is tiny, it's likely that Partner Bob at the firm where Alex is interviewing knows people at Alex's old firm, so Bob may very well call up his buddies and ask their impressions of Alex. I would think most partners wouldn't jump at the opportunity to talk shit about poor Alex (unless he was really that horrendous), but a lukewarm response can be just as telling. And unless someone is a complete lunatic, they're not going to make up false stories about Alex, so slander is not an issue. So, is there a blacklist? No. Is there an informal grapevine whereby most things can be known with a few calls? Yes.

The potential of a slander lawsuit is the concern (very bad publicity), not the 'false' statement itself. I think it's commonly understood that sophisticated employers tend not to bad mouth former employees for this exact reason (especially in the legal field).

My point is that it seems to be a strange question to specify "blacklist" and to specify "stealthed". And also, the OP (and several replies) stated that they or someone was "stealthed" for bona fide performance reasons. So this thread is confusing (not the above answer) because some people are talking about fired, some are talking about stealthed, some are talking about references generally, etc. and all are using the same imprecise term.

[Anonymous User]

Is that commonly understood? I mean, isn't there a difference between saying "x did sloppy work/missed deadlines/was difficult to work with/abused the meal policy" and concocting some malicious false statement about x? What is the point of asking for references if no one is ever going to say anything remotely negative? And isn't damning with faint praise how it works most of the time anyways? Maybe I am just not sophisticated enough to know these rules....

[Anonymous User]

Is that commonly understood? I mean, isn't there a difference between saying "x did sloppy work/missed deadlines/was difficult to work with/abused the meal policy" and concocting some malicious false statement about x? What is the point of asking for references if no one is ever going to say anything remotely negative? And isn't damning with faint praise how it works most of the time anyways? Maybe I am just not sophisticated enough to know these rules....

Obviously the number of people suing for slander is practically zero. But the firm doesn't benefit from giving out negative references, so it just doesn't bother. But certainly people say bad things about people all the time, especially on the phone.

On the other hand, the legal world isn't actually that small, at least when we're talking about biglaw in big cities. In my husband's field, nobody is separated by any more than 2-3 connections (i.e. if you don't know somebody personally, somebody you know almost certainly does), so there's gossip about basically everybody all the time, and trust me, it's mostly negative.