Is Kirkland pushing back incoming associate start dates? Forum

[Anonymous User]

I have a hard time believing KE would actually delay start. Would be an open admission of issues at the firm. Until now they've very aggressively frames layoffs as performance based.

[emc91]

If this happens, what do people usually do between taking the bar and January? Get a part time job? Live with parents? Do firms give stipends to pay rent?

When I was delayed as a 2020 grad I ran up around $5k in credit bills trying to prepare for the October bar and stay alive; was also on unemployment and living off the very last of any money I'd saved from federal grants/relief and the summer may bonus (which mostly gets eaten by bar prep needs like adaptibar, etc.). To those who are pushed back my heart goes out to you -- it's a tough spot to be in. I'm at a good place now, if you need any help/advice feel free to reach out.

Same. My firm also did not provide a stipend and our graduation/bar bonus was measly. If my parents hadn’t generously given me $2500 to help with costs, I would’ve run up even more in credit card debt.

Also in a good place now for anyone who wants to talk.

[Anonymous User]

I have a hard time believing KE would actually delay start. Would be an open admission of issues at the firm. Until now they've very aggressively frames layoffs as performance based.

Same. I guess we will find out this month as their onboarding portal still says the April communication will provide the official start date.

[Anonymous User]

Cooley (following Gunderson) just deferred first-years to January, and only giving a 10k stipend.

[Anonymous User]

I have a hard time believing KE would actually delay start. Would be an open admission of issues at the firm. Until now they've very aggressively frames layoffs as performance based.

They obviously are having issues (even if those issues are "we are going to make slightly less money than the year before), and they arent going to hide it forever (eventually numbers will come out). Layoffs are already an admission of issues and everybody knows it. They can frame it however we want, just like they can frame moving back 1L starts, "Due to large number of first years, we believe a staggered start time will allow for better onboarding and training" or whatever.

[Anonymous User]

Wow. Doing it this early is pretty crazy. Means they want ppl to jump ship.

[Anonymous User]

I have a hard time believing KE would actually delay start. Would be an open admission of issues at the firm. Until now they've very aggressively frames layoffs as performance based.

They obviously are having issues (even if those issues are "we are going to make slightly less money than the year before), and they arent going to hide it forever (eventually numbers will come out). Layoffs are already an admission of issues and everybody knows it. They can frame it however we want, just like they can frame moving back 1L starts, "Due to large number of first years, we believe a staggered start time will allow for better onboarding and training" or whatever.

I can believe that Cooley and Gunderson are having trouble making payroll (or would if they didn't RIF and defer etc). KE is the most profitable firm in the world. They can afford to pay salaries for a few extra months. They just don't want to.

[Anonymous User]

Wow. Doing it this early is pretty crazy. Means they want ppl to jump ship.

Yeah, I think that doing this after Gunderson just fired first years is a clear signal that they would prefer if Class of 2023 go elsewhere. I would not count on having a job in January.

[Sackboy]

I can believe that Cooley and Gunderson are having trouble making payroll (or would if they didn't RIF and defer etc). KE is the most profitable firm in the world. They can afford to pay salaries for a few extra months. They just don't want to.

No firm with millions in PPP is "having trouble making payroll."

[Anonymous User]

I have a hard time believing KE would actually delay start. Would be an open admission of issues at the firm. Until now they've very aggressively frames layoffs as performance based.

They obviously are having issues (even if those issues are "we are going to make slightly less money than the year before), and they arent going to hide it forever (eventually numbers will come out). Layoffs are already an admission of issues and everybody knows it. They can frame it however we want, just like they can frame moving back 1L starts, "Due to large number of first years, we believe a staggered start time will allow for better onboarding and training" or whatever.

I can believe that Cooley and Gunderson are having trouble making payroll (or would if they didn't RIF and defer etc). KE is the most profitable firm in the world. They can afford to pay salaries for a few extra months. They just don't want to.

Yeah Kirkland just operates like an old-school ruthless corporation. The owners of the firm are doing fantastic. They have, seemingly correctly, determined that they will always be able to find enough interchangeable bodies to do low level associate work no matter how bad their reputation gets.

[Anonymous User]

Vault says 526 total (469 2Ls; 57 1Ls). The firm also said 469 in onboarding materials.

Lol regardless of whether it's closer to 400 or 500, it's way too much.

As Mono pointed out, 425 is the number of starting first years. The difference between 500+ and 425 here is 75+, which is a $20-30 million compensation expense when you include salary, healthcare, fringe benefits, office space, etc., which is king of... significant.

Firms need first years. KE is like 3,500 attorneys and grew its revenue $500 million in a down year. I'll leave it to them to decide what "too much" is but thanks for your thought provoking gut reaction.

K&E knows how to run a big law firm. But like any big law firm, they make recruiting decisions months or years in advance, using imperfect information. K&E themselves would take a smaller class if they had the benefit of hindsight. Nobody predicting a historic banking crisis and massive dealmaking slowdown when these kids were being hired.

This is right - law firms are hiring 1st year associates over 2 years in advance of their starting dates now.

I don't fully disagree about the imperfect nature of predicting economic cycles re: hiring, especially where the firm has shown good faith efforts to be loyal to associates, but based on the numbers and profits of even the biggest banks in the market, the banking crisis was about the whitest black swan imaginable. I mean, I literally took a class called "Finance for Social Theorists" in undergraduate in 2016 and the professor told us there would be another banking/liquidity crisis within a decade. IF Kirkland wants to pretend they have a crystal ball and call these layoffs performance based, THEN they deserve to have the fact that this was fairly predictable thrown in their faces.

I don't agree with KE's management decisions, but it's one thing to say some sort of liquidity crisis will occur sometime within the next decade. Being able to pinpoint when it will occur is another (and anyone able to do that with relative accuracy wouldn't be working in biglaw, they would be making much more money elsewhere).

OP from quoted comment -- this particular professor was actually teaching as a ... philanthropic effort, perhaps is the best way to put it lol. A very distinguished genius. Possibly one of my favorite professors of all time and one of my favorite people on the planet. He takes a lot of students under his wing and feeds them fancy dinners after class and has a real tutelage thing going. Extremely wealthy on the side. Owns a Picasso. Made a ton of money doing exactly what you're saying he probably didn't do. just saying.

[Monochromatic Oeuvre]

I can believe that Cooley and Gunderson are having trouble making payroll (or would if they didn't RIF and defer etc). KE is the most profitable firm in the world. They can afford to pay salaries for a few extra months. They just don't want to.

No firm with millions in PPP is "having trouble making payroll."

In some circumstances it's very possible a rich firm operates at a loss. I think it happened to a few firms in 2020 (CWT? Orrick?). You can have a very high PPP that masks high leverage, concentration risk and a pretty low profit margin. Then a 25-30% decline in collections wipes out your entire profit, and that's something that can definitely happen when you specialize in a very cyclical industry.

To be clear, I don't think that's what's happening here (this has all happened slowly enough for moves to be proactive rather than reactive), and no major firm will ever come close to *literally* missing payroll--you have all the profits for the year you already booked, plus eight- and nine-figure credit lines, and if that fails you'll either have a shotgun marriage or a stripping-for-parts and bankruptcy. Just want to make the point that rich partners does not ensure business security the way it might in an industry where all the money isn't pulled out of the coffers each year.

[Anonymous User]

I can believe that Cooley and Gunderson are having trouble making payroll (or would if they didn't RIF and defer etc). KE is the most profitable firm in the world. They can afford to pay salaries for a few extra months. They just don't want to.

No firm with millions in PPP is "having trouble making payroll."

In some circumstances it's very possible a rich firm operates at a loss. I think it happened to a few firms in 2020 (CWT? Orrick?). You can have a very high PPP that masks high leverage, concentration risk and a pretty low profit margin. Then a 25-30% decline in collections wipes out your entire profit, and that's something that can definitely happen when you specialize in a very cyclical industry.

To be clear, I don't think that's what's happening here (this has all happened slowly enough for moves to be proactive rather than reactive), and no major firm will ever come close to *literally* missing payroll--you have all the profits for the year you already booked, plus eight- and nine-figure credit lines, and if that fails you'll either have a shotgun marriage or a stripping-for-parts and bankruptcy. Just want to make the point that rich partners does not ensure business security the way it might in an industry where all the money isn't pulled out of the coffers each year.

Right. By "reactive" I assume you mean that rainmaking partners would jump ship with their business long before a firm couldn't make payroll. Once you lose enough of these partners, the firm either sells itself or files for bankruptcy. None of the firms mentioned ITT or others like it (save for maybe Shearman?) are even close to this point. K&E and others are more like tech companies downsizing in view of decreased profits than SVB.

That doesn't mean people shouldn't be concerned. It doesn't really matter whether you get fired to protect the partners' profits or because the business failed - either way you're out a job.

[nixy]

OP from quoted comment -- this particular professor was actually teaching as a ... philanthropic effort, perhaps is the best way to put it lol. A very distinguished genius. Possibly one of my favorite professors of all time and one of my favorite people on the planet. He takes a lot of students under his wing and feeds them fancy dinners after class and has a real tutelage thing going. Extremely wealthy on the side. Owns a Picasso. Made a ton of money doing exactly what you're saying he probably didn't do. just saying.

the existence of your one genius prof doesn’t prove that that biglaw firms are able to pinpoint this kind of banking crisis with enough precision to adjust OCI hiring for 18 months later, though. Your point is that this prof is one of a kind.

[Anonymous User]

Wow. Doing it this early is pretty crazy. Means they want ppl to jump ship.

Yeah, I think that doing this after Gunderson just fired first years is a clear signal that they would prefer if Class of 2023 go elsewhere. I would not count on having a job in January.

Reminder that K&E hasn’t actually done anything yet and 100% of the discussion in this thread is pure speculation. Cheers to OP for noticing the intriguing website change, but everyone needs to cool their reactions way the hell down until there is actual news to get upset about. This wouldn’t be the first time someone posted a negative rumor that got tons of attention, and then nobody bothers to tune in weeks or months later when it turns out to be untrue.

[Anonymous User]

I have a hard time believing KE would actually delay start. Would be an open admission of issues at the firm. Until now they've very aggressively frames layoffs as performance based.

They obviously are having issues (even if those issues are "we are going to make slightly less money than the year before), and they arent going to hide it forever (eventually numbers will come out). Layoffs are already an admission of issues and everybody knows it. They can frame it however we want, just like they can frame moving back 1L starts, "Due to large number of first years, we believe a staggered start time will allow for better onboarding and training" or whatever.

The most recent numbers literally just came out, and K&E was up in both gross revenue and PPEP (in a year when basically all of its peers went down, in some cases significantly), and it is now the clear #1 globally on both metrics. Are they making some cuts anyway to further protect profits and push for 2023 to be yet-another breaking year? Seems like yes. But that’s very very different from “obviously having issues” like with the big tech-focused firms (Cooley, Gunderson, etc).

[Anonymous User]

OP from quoted comment -- this particular professor was actually teaching as a ... philanthropic effort, perhaps is the best way to put it lol. A very distinguished genius. Possibly one of my favorite professors of all time and one of my favorite people on the planet. He takes a lot of students under his wing and feeds them fancy dinners after class and has a real tutelage thing going. Extremely wealthy on the side. Owns a Picasso. Made a ton of money doing exactly what you're saying he probably didn't do. just saying.

the existence of your one genius prof doesn’t prove that that biglaw firms are able to pinpoint this kind of banking crisis with enough precision to adjust OCI hiring for 18 months later, though. Your point is that this prof is one of a kind.

No, my point is that when a black swan is predicted it becomes at best, a gray swan. When professors at schools are teaching students to expect liquidity crises they're not even gray swans. The gray swans are white hence why Kirkland, a firm with the supposedly greatest restructuring department in big law, should've seen coming what even undergrad professors had seen coming years ago.

[Anonymous User]

This stuff about "my professor said" is some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard. No professor is "calling" market liquidity crises. No soul in the world is an authority on that, not unless they've made billions (literally, with a "b") doing it before.

[nixy]

OP from quoted comment -- this particular professor was actually teaching as a ... philanthropic effort, perhaps is the best way to put it lol. A very distinguished genius. Possibly one of my favorite professors of all time and one of my favorite people on the planet. He takes a lot of students under his wing and feeds them fancy dinners after class and has a real tutelage thing going. Extremely wealthy on the side. Owns a Picasso. Made a ton of money doing exactly what you're saying he probably didn't do. just saying.

the existence of your one genius prof doesn’t prove that that biglaw firms are able to pinpoint this kind of banking crisis with enough precision to adjust OCI hiring for 18 months later, though. Your point is that this prof is one of a kind.

No, my point is that when a black swan is predicted it becomes at best, a gray swan. When professors at schools are teaching students to expect liquidity crises they're not even gray swans. The gray swans are white hence why Kirkland, a firm with the supposedly greatest restructuring department in big law, should've seen coming what even undergrad professors had seen coming years ago.

…so you’re saying your prof predicted the exact timing of this crisis (like he told your class when this would happen) and that it was therefore obvious to firms organizing OCI in 2021? Come on.

[Anonymous User]

Wow. Doing it this early is pretty crazy. Means they want ppl to jump ship.

Yeah, I think that doing this after Gunderson just fired first years is a clear signal that they would prefer if Class of 2023 go elsewhere. I would not count on having a job in January.

Reminder that K&E hasn’t actually done anything yet and 100% of the discussion in this thread is pure speculation. Cheers to OP for noticing the intriguing website change, but everyone needs to cool their reactions way the hell down until there is actual news to get upset about. This wouldn’t be the first time someone posted a negative rumor that got tons of attention, and then nobody bothers to tune in weeks or months later when it turns out to be untrue.

OP that started this thread here. I agree with this. I noticed the website change and became concerned after Gunderson pushed back their start date. As someone else pointed out though, it could simply be that Kirkland is pushing their date back by a week or two and is a more administrative decision surrounding training or something of the sort. The update did say that they would be welcoming associates this fall. This implies that the date would not be later than November.

[Anonymous User]

This stuff about "my professor said" is some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard. No professor is "calling" market liquidity crises. No soul in the world is an authority on that, not unless they've made billions (literally, with a "b") doing it before.

But he owns a Picasso…

[Anonymous User]

This stuff about "my professor said" is some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard. No professor is "calling" market liquidity crises. No soul in the world is an authority on that, not unless they've made billions (literally, with a "b") doing it before.

Even then, they're not doing it. There's a long history of people making billions on one call and then being wrong (or just 50/50) on everything for the rest of their lives. Look at basically everybody who called 2008, for example.

Quitting while you're ahead to go teach is 100% the right strategy.

[Anonymous User]

Wait a second, what are internationals supposed to do? We're allowed 90 days of unemployment on our OPT. If the start date is ANY time after October 14, we'd lose our permission to stay in the US!

[Anonymous User]

Wait a second, what are internationals supposed to do? We're allowed 90 days of unemployment on our OPT. If the start date is ANY time after October 14, we'd lose our permission to stay in the US!

Kirkland has not announced their start date as of now. So I wouldn't worry too much. If they do push it past October, I'm sure they would work with you to resolve this issue.

[Anonymous User]

This stuff about "my professor said" is some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard. No professor is "calling" market liquidity crises. No soul in the world is an authority on that, not unless they've made billions (literally, with a "b") doing it before.

Even then, they're not doing it. There's a long history of people making billions on one call and then being wrong (or just 50/50) on everything for the rest of their lives. Look at basically everybody who called 2008, for example.

Quitting while you're ahead to go teach is 100% the right strategy.

You don't get knighted in England, or loan your personal art collections to museums, or decide to teach philanthropically with your spare time because you got *poor* with your intelligence. JFC. So many jealous a-holes on this sub. Like, it's actually okay to admit that successful people exist also saw things like this coming years before hand. The point is a lot of people were talking about this, just because you weren't in those conversations doesn't mean they didn't happen. I mean there has been like a whole school of literature from 2008 onwards about how a liquidity crisis was coming and 2008 was just the beginning. Or...is it natural for healthy economies to operate at collapsing interest rates for a decade +?