Lawyers Getting Paid Not To Work
Are you also an unemployed lawyer with a massive student loan debt who is struggling to make ends meet and pay the rent? Well, there is some good and bad news for us. The good news is that we have a new group of people to focus our ire upon during our extended periods of professional inactivity. The bad news is that our green-eyed scorn is directed at some of our brethren, associates in major law firms that have not been fired yet, who are about to get paid exorbitant sums of money to NOT work. Where, you ask, does this utopia exist? The answer is Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom where they recently offered all 1,300 of their worldwide associates one-third of their base pay to NOT show up for work for a year. So the next time you are whittling your day away eating scrambled eggs and watching reruns of The Office on Hulu, remember that there are plenty of big-firm associates doing the exact same thing except they are making close to six figures to do so and their eggs have diamonds sprinkled on them.
“But even by more stringent standards of fun, the coming year looks pretty good. Ms. Eisenlord, 36, who works in Skadden’s banking group, will be buying a plane ticket that will take her around the world for a year, and she’s been stocking her apartment in Brooklyn with Lonely Planet travel guides.
Although she’s not yet sure exactly what she’ll be doing on her trip, she has some ideas. She would like to teach English to monks in Sri Lanka and possibly help bring solar power to remote parts of the Himalayas. She’ll probably hit 10 to 15 destinations around the world, most likely practicing not-for-profit law wherever she can be helpful.
The best part of all: Skadden is paying her about $80,000 to do it.
For a sixth-year associate at a New York law firm, $80,000 isn’t exactly competitive pay. But for someone cruising around the world, doing good wherever she sees fit and, let’s face it, probably hitting a beach or two, the pay is excellent.
Only in a financial world turned upside down would an arrangement like this one make sense. Looking to cut costs like everyone else, but not prepared to lay off associates, Skadden has chosen instead to offer all of its associates — about 1,300 worldwide — the option of accepting a third of their base pay to not show up for work for a year. (So far, the partners have no equivalent arrangement.)
The company is helping associates find pro bono work, and is encouraging them to do so. But the lawyers could also spend the year catching up on every episode of “Top Chef” that they missed during the boom years, or traveling around the world, “all of which is O.K. by us,” said Matthew Mallow, a partner at the firm. Other firms have adopted similar strategies, but Skadden’s program is unusual in that it has no pro bono requirements.
As of Friday, about 125 associates had expressed interest. “I think it’s fair to say that the numbers are in excess of our expectations,” Mr. Mallow said.”
Only at a corporate law firm would the managers underestimate employees’ interest in taking a year off from the grind for what most of America would consider a small fortune.
-S1 [TLL]
