(photo by David Lat).
The managing partner of an elite Biglaw firm once told me, “you have no idea how many resumes I get from Kirkland partners… people are desperate to get out of there.” We’d been talking about a piece I was working on about the rise of the “non-equity partner,” a cynical faux partnership tier allowing firms to better market their special counsel and slap golden handcuffs on senior attorneys that might balk at being forced to accept a title demotion to move anywhere else.
Roy Strom at Bloomberg Law conducted a decade-spanning review of Kirkland’s non-equity partnership ranks and there’s a lot to crunch in this article, but it comes to a clear conclusion: they really are desperate to get out.
Among the 84 lawyers in [Former Kirkland partner Matthew] Topic’s 2012 class of those promoted to non-share partner, fewer than 40% remain at the firm and only 14% are publicly identifiable as equity partners, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis. Bloomberg Law compiled 10 years of data on Kirkland non-share partners. Among the 2009 class, only about 20% remain at the firm.
Topic managed to build a small practice out of his pro bono work. He was responsible for the FOIA fight that led to the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video. Most non-equity partners who leave Kirkland end up in some role that still requires putting on a brave face in public about the firm that still sends referrals. Privately, former Kirkland attorneys told Strom a different story:
Ultimately, [one unnamed former Kirkland attorney] lasted about four years as a non-share partner. In the meantime, he said he was billing close to $2 million a year and making, at most, $500,000.
“I was a money maker for them,” said the partner, who declined to be named to protect relationships with the firm.
That’s not an uncommon tale. Strom’s post notes that non-equity partners at Kirkland are bringing in roughly $2 million more than they’re getting paid. As leveraged assets go, that’s about as good as a firm can get. Equity partners are averaging a take home ten times as much with an annual take of around $5 million. Even the most junior equity partners are making almost $2 million.
Unfortunately, the Kirkland model may be taking over Biglaw. The ranks of one-tier, lockstep firms shrinks every year. Cleary just had the high-profile defection/firing of partners seeking a bigger slice of the pie. Old school partnership models are disappearing like Elves departing to the West at the end of Lord of the Rings and similarly leaving a less magical world. The old model brings an air of collegiality to the practice, a sense that every partner is pulling the same direction because everyone benefits from the firm’s success. Partners aren’t going rogue and hoarding their private book of business and fighting internal conflict turf wars. That’s the price the firm pays to be able to award the spoils to those making the most rain and part of that model is keeping the equity spoils tightly guarded.
And because it’s a strategy that’s working — and working at Kirkland better than anywhere else — it’s going to continue to spread. And Kirkland’s legion of “partners in name only” are going to continue taking their titles and moving elsewhere.
How Kirkland ‘Partners in Name Only’ Live in Limbo [Bloomberg Law]
Earlier: Repeat After Me, ‘Partnership Without Equity Is Not A Partnership’
Major Lateral Moves: It’s ‘Open Season On Cleary Partners’
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.