What's Up With Bingham McCutchen?
As you may recall, earlier this year there were rumors about there not being enough work to go around in the San Francisco office of Bingham McCutchen. Some of these rumors were prompted by the firm offering buyouts to some associates.
The rumors of slowness are starting to resurface:
I am a 2L at [a top ten law school], and we are mid-EIP. Early this summer I bid for Bingham's San Francisco office, only to receive an email after bidding closed that they would not be coming to EIP and my bid was cancelled.I just spoke to a friend who bid for their DC office and received an interview. She got an email (last week I believe) saying Bingham DC would not be attending either, and her interview was cancelled.
What's up? Sinking ship? Not enough work?
Not so, according to firm spokesperson Claire Papanastasiou:
We carefully assess our hiring needs and annually review our OCI approach to maintain a balance of entry-level attorneys in all of our offices. Class sizes change from year-to-year, and we adjust our on-campus schedules accordingly.For example, in San Francisco and D.C., we had a higher-than-anticipated acceptance rate for this past summer. To maintain the appropriate balance of entry-level lawyers in those offices, we've adjusted next summer's class size.
If you have more light to shed on the situation, please feel free to email us (subject line: "Bingham McCutchen").
Update: Remember the Fried Frank policy on entering one's billable time? Bingham is also anxious about time entry (even if their policy is more forgiving). Memo after the jump (or click here).
Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Bingham McCutchen (scroll down)
BINGHAM MCCUTCHEN LLP
Associate, Counsel & Of Counsel Time Entry Policy
Timely and accurate time entry is the backbone of the
firm’s revenue stream. A delay in time entry affects
the accuracy and reliability of our client bills and
often fails to capture all of the work performed by
our attorneys. To address what has become an ongoing
problem, the firm is instituting the following Time
Entry policy for all associates, counsel and of
counsel. This policy will become effective on August
1, 2007.
• All attorneys must strive to enter time on a daily
basis. Daily time entry is the most effective means
of ensuring that time entries are accurate and
provides firm management with essential up-to-date
information on work-in-progress.
• The weekly time entry deadline is 8:00 p.m. on
Tuesday for the previous week’s time. All time for
the period Sunday through Saturday must be entered and
closed by the weekly time entry deadline. The
exception to the Tuesday deadline is the month end
deadline which is communicated to all attorneys
several days prior to the cutoff.
• The Accounting Department will maintain a list of
associates, counsel and of counsel who have
accumulated more than five delinquent days in any
given year (Dec. 1 - Nov. 30).
• Failure to meet the Firm’s time entry deadline will
negatively reflect on an attorney’s good standing and
will be addressed as part of the firm’s periodic
performance reviews. In addition, once an associate,
counsel or of counsel has accumulated five delinquent
days in any given year, the following penalty shall
apply: Attorneys who have delinquent time entries
(entries that are not in the system and closed by
Tuesday for the previous week) will be assessed one
“point” for each delinquent day. These points will
accumulate throughout the year and the total number of
points assessed will be considered by the firm in
determining compensation and bonus.
Please use the month of July, 2007 to bring any
delinquent days into compliance. You will continue to
receive an automated delinquent time notification on
Wednesday each week that summarizes your delinquent
days.
If you have any questions about this Time Entry
Policy, please contact your Attorney Development
Director or Manager. Thank you for your cooperation in
assisting the firm in this important aspect of our business.
(27) Comments
First again!
Insert Rider A:
"Clearly, as a firm that overexpanded into a shrinking market and is now accelerating toiletwards, we expected that none of our summers would accept their offers to join. That some have foolishly done so has necessitated a hiring freeze so that we can reevaluate the intelligence of the people who come here in the first place."
who cares? Maybe they cancelled your interview because after further consideration, you suck.
What's with the demerits for time entry? Any other firms do this?
Why do some people insist on putting commas between the month and the year (e.g., "Please use the month of July, 2007 to bring any delinquent days into compliance.") and/or a comma after the year ("Please use the month of July 4, 2007, to bring any delinquent days into compliance.")? The purpose of the comma is to separate the numbers in a date, so there'll be no confusion over what day or year is being referred to. That's it. There no need for a comma if there's no day or no year mentioned, and just as there's no need to have a matching comma after the year.
Many of the large firms are taking smaller classes this coming summer for several reasons. For example, my well-regarded DC firm plans on cutting next year's summer class by about 30% and instead focusing on 2nd and 3rd year laterals. Word on the street from our recruiting department is that many other DC firms are planning similiar moves this year.
I am curious to see if any other DC practitioners have heard something along these lines with regard to their firms.
My friend is a first-year associate at Bingham SF and, judging by her Gmail chat status, she has plenty of work.
To: 1:26 PM
See, e.g., me.
Why don't they have enough work?
1:54 -- You are second rate, at best.
126: i bet you're a lot of fun at parties.
I think Bingham's problems in SF are mostly in litigation. They also recently lost a big antitrust partner to Latham.
I wonder if any of this is attributable to long-simmering merger-related problems (i.e. culture clash with McCutchen attorneys).
2:05 - i guess talking about time entry is your idea of interesting convo?
This is much ado about nothing. Certain offices and certain practices of major firms invariably have major peaks and flows of work. The real issue here is that Bingham apparently has an increased business sense and is more aggressively managing itself. That's a good thing if you are Bingham. Most firms tend to bury their heads in the sands to problems like lack of work and underproductive lawyers. Bingham sounds like it is proactively addressing the issue. I say bully for them.
Late time entry costs firms money. With the focus these days on profits per partner, daily time entry is a simple way to increase profits. What's the big deal about entering time every day anyway? Sure is easier than waiting until the end of the month and figuring out what the hell you did all month. Lat, get over the time entry thing, it doesn't mean anything.
2:37--
Late time entry does mean something if performance reviews are effected by a few late ones.
2:37:
And how exactly does weekly time entry as opposed to daily cost the firm money?
This 2L's story sounds extremely similar to my experience with Brobeck a few years ago (months before they gave everyone their walking-papers). Back then, Brobeck said everything was fine too...
Daily time entry is a good thing. I defy anybody to maintain good accounting of what they did day to day and then record their time at the end of the week or month. Daily time entry is good business hygiene. You do right by the client and right by the firm.
My bid got cancelled too!!!
3:54:
Thank goodness.
The spokesperson's line about a higher expected yield in DC for this last summer almost certainly can't be true - they put a call out for additional interviews late in the interview season.
If a firm is so poor at planning capacity that they decide not to attend interviews that they have already scheduled and planned for, then that is lame and they suck and you should avoid them. Why couldn't they still do the interviews and just be a little more selective?
Comma Lesson
Commas are placed after the listing of a year not to avoid confusion as to whether the year is a day (as there are fewer than 100 days in each month, it would be ludicrous to assume anyone with a brain would be confused by a missing comma), but because, grammatically speaking, the year functions as an appositive in the sentence, which is to be separated by commas. See Streicher, Bernard, S.J. Writing Handbook Rule D40.
Thank you, 6:47. How did any of these people get out of grammar school with such an abysmal working knowledge of punctuation?
1:26 to $65K and summer school.
6:47....
The earlier person's reasoning for why commas are used was not precise, but your response has nothing to do with what he was talking about. The Bingham memo's use of comma in the month/year is wrong (or at least unnecessary), and the earlier poster's examples of wrong/unnecessary comma usage are appropriate. In other words, he's right -- in the examples he gave, the commas are unnecessary.
11:06 - You are incorrect.
"July 4, 2007, was a firm holiday." correct
"July 4, 2007 was a firm holiday." incorrect