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Seven Partners Leave Miami’s Akerman Senterfitt; Source Tells of Pay Beefs

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 11, 2008, 1:43 pm CST

Seven partners have left Akerman Senterfitt in Miami amid rumors of missed budget projections and reduced partner pay.

Three litigators have left to start their own boutique law firm while another is joining a different Miami firm, the Daily Business Review reports. Three employment lawyers are also joining a different Miami firm.

A source told the Daily Business Review that the firm missed budget projections two years in a row. The firm trimmed partner pay last year to such an extent that some associates were making more on a weekly basis than some partners, when holdbacks and capital contributions were taken into account, a source said.

Others blamed the compensation system that places a premium on business origination, said to favor the top partners who control the firm.

Firm president Robert Zinn said the sources were incorrect. “In fact, this year, on average, the shareholders in the firm all in the aggregate made 6 percent more than the previous year,” he told the legal publication.

One of the departing partners forming the litigation boutique, Larry Silverman, said he left the 420-lawyer Akerman because it had grown so big that it had to reject cases because of conflict of interest—cases that he wanted to handle. “Obviously, the fact that they are very healthy is not something they can or should apologize for,” he told the Business Review.