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[Desert Fox]

[Tiago Splitter]

Nah first they need to give the speech about how everyone is ok before dropping the hammer a few months later

[Byakuya769]

Meanwhile at other peer firms, good reviews just start getting increasingly difficult to come by...

[Anonymous User]

Because I am sincerely considering accepting a Latham offer, this sort of thing does scare me though I don't know too much about the lay offs. Were they centered around lit or corp, midlevels, or new associates? Was it office specific or spread across the firm as a whole?

[xael]

I don't know if you've heard but my screener was ADAMANT that they are now operating on a much more conservative scale and learned from their past mistakes & if you can't believe your screener interviewer who can you believe???

[Anonymous User]

Can someone post a link to to this article. I am also considering a Latham offer so I would like to know more about this before committing. Thanks.

[JusticeHarlan]

Can someone post a link to to this article. I am also considering a Latham offer so I would like to know more about this before committing. Thanks.

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... &p=3243463

[RedGiant]

Because I am sincerely considering accepting a Latham offer, this sort of thing does scare me though I don't know too much about the lay offs. Were they centered around lit or corp, midlevels, or new associates? Was it office specific or spread across the firm as a whole?

I worked at Latham SV during the layoffs. First Bob Dell (chairman) told the associates that there would absolutely, positively not be layoffs. Then partners started circling the wagons and shunting work to their favorite associates and leaving others with low hours. Then stealth layoffs began, including some people who received no severance because they "should have known." Also, in my office, many associates were encouraged to "write down" their time (meaning to cut their hours before they did their timesheets), so partners, especially Patrick Pohlen, would lean heavily on associates to work hard but not bill. Ironically, half of the first years in the SV office had been pulled onto doc review and did have steady hours, so the doc review associates, for the most part, survived the layoffs while the first years who were working their butts off but were forbidden from billing all of their time, got laid off. Also, just to add salt to the wound, for some of the non-first year layoff victims, the then-managing partner, Ora Fischer, would tell them that they were terrible attorneys and they should really reconsider whether they should be in law. As she laid them off. It was horrid.

My hallway at Latham SV was mostly laterals and every single one of them, despite being begged to join ASAP in summer 2008, was laid off by Spring of 2009. Many first years were fired in NYC too. You can check abovethelaw.com for archived articles about all of this. Unfortunately, ATL switched commenting systems to Disqus shortly after the layoffs and a lot of the helpful comments about what was really going on were lost in the changeover. But the articles on ATL are damning enough.

For the most part, people got 6 months severance, but there were NO JOBS at that time. Some of the associates eventually went to smaller firms, some did doc review on a very sporadic basis, and for some, Latham ruined their careers. RUINED. It was horrid. It was especially horrid how they did stealth layoffs...in secret, very shamefully, and then all of a sudden someone would have either no runway or 1-3 months to find a job, but they were destaffed from all work, so they were sort of shiftless around the office, and everyone would know what was coming for them.

Also, Latham de-staffed a lot of 2nd and 3rd years in favor of first years. Ironically, either they all got fired or ran screaming from the building.

The Latham SV office was one of the most toxic places I've ever worked. Ever. And I'm an OLD.

[84651846190]

http://youtubedoubler.com/8usC

[Johann]

Yeah that shit sounds horrific.

[TheoO]

The whole "we won't kill you!" before the death squads start is really infuriating.