DLA Piper Will Cut Pay for Most Partners by 11.5 Percent
Most partners at DLA Piper will see pay cuts of 11.5 percent this year, but a few of its superstars will earn more.
The move comes after Dewey & LeBoeuf announced about a week ago that it had chopped the pay of 66 partners over the past 15 months. Law firm consultant Richard Gary told the Recorder that more law firms are likely to do the same as their revenues decline this year.
DLA’s U.S. managing partner J. Terence O’Malley said the pay cut, affecting lawyers only in the United States, is part of the law firm’s budget projection process, according to the Recorder story. DLA Piper hopes to end this year with zero debt, as it did in 2008.
The law firm projects a revenue decline this year of 7 percent and a profit drop of 6 percent, the story says. “We are conservatively budgeting this year to be a down year,” O’Malley told the publication.
The law firm reduced its reliance on bank loans when it asked 275 nonequity “income” partners to make capital contributions last November. “Our decision was to have less debt and be less exposed to the vagaries of the credit market,” O’Malley told the Recorder.
In February, DLA announced layoffs of about 80 associates and 100 staffers.
