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I read yesterday that Kirkland is now the #1 firm and increased their headcount by a substantial amount last year. Should this worry incoming summers/associates if the economy takes a downturn? Would their be substantial layoffs?

then join their formidable and massive and big and fat restructuring practice. long live kirkland

A good amount of this headcount increase was fleshing out new offices in Boston and Houston, while continuing to build up the NYC office. Revenue per lawyer went up 5% to 1.55 million, PPL by like 20% to nearly 5 million. I don't think it's reason to worry. It's not like they're adding on tons of associates for the same partners. It seems like they're much more focused on poaching profitable partners and then they bring in associates to service the new work.

Anonymous User wrote:I read yesterday that Kirkland is now the #1 firm and increased their headcount by a substantial amount last year. Should this worry incoming summers/associates if the economy takes a downturn? Would their be substantial layoffs?

You should definitely be worried that their would be layoffs, substantial or otherwise.

Does anyone have an opinion on their Houston office? What the general sentiment is? Law student trying to get an honest idea of the market.

Anonymous User wrote:A good amount of this headcount increase was fleshing out new offices in Boston and Houston, while continuing to build up the NYC office. Revenue per lawyer went up 5% to 1.55 million, PPL by like 20% to nearly 5 million. I don't think it's reason to worry. It's not like they're adding on tons of associates for the same partners. It seems like they're much more focused on poaching profitable partners and then they bring in associates to service the new work.

That being said. Layoffs happen to every firm during a recession. However your fears shouldn't be worse because of KE's increased headcount

K&E grew their revenue per attorney last year by a lot and has a dominant bankruptcy group that hedges in a downturn; you'd have more things to worry about elsewhere

Kirland & Ellis to me is the best law firm in the country. It is expertly run. They'll push you out if you're a bad associate and there's a lot of bad associates at KE, but they take care of the good ones and the exit options are phenomenal.

Please give some examples of its expert running

churn and burn baby

jd20132013 wrote:Please give some examples of its expert running

Not annon above, but one example that sticks in my mind has to be the $2-3k of sushi, steak tar-tar and ahi tuna that remained untouched at 1:30pm on the spread for a partner meeting that was happening one time I was in there offices for a different meeting (no food provided since the midlevel we were there to meet with was only billing a client to keep the lights on, mundane thing that is).

On a more serious note, they convinced Blackstone to give them more or less all of their work, which is pretty expert.

man long live kirkland. this class of incoming associates are the biggest ever so everybody just needs to stay on top of their game to survive.