Generally Worthless Associate Furious About Pay Cut

When second-year associate Evan Patterson opened the hand delivered, confidential memo from his firm chairman at Baker & McKenzie, his blood started to boil. The memo brought the bad news that due to “the extremely challenging economic environment,” associate salaries were being slashed. “Unbelievable!” exclaimed an irate Patterson as he hid the memo under the two other pieces of paper on his desk. “I’m so outta here once this economy turns around a decade from now!” Patterson then charged out of his office for a stress breaker workout at his swanky sports club down the street.

On his way to the gym, Patterson called his good friend and former colleague, Kevin Grouse, to vent. “KG! You are not going to believe what happened at the BM today. Oh yeah, they gave us the final kick in the cajones by pulling about 10-20K out of our personal bottom lines.” A puzzled Grouse took a moment before explaining to Patterson that already happened to him (times 16) when they laid him off six weeks ago. “Give it a rest dude. Right now my only source of income is some LSAT tutoring I’m doing for family friends, so I’d take your painful pay cut any day,” commented Grouse before faking a call waiting to get off the phone.

When he returned to the office, Patterson proceeded to spend the next two hours commenting furiously about the demise of Baker & McKenzie on Above the Law. Then he took a moment to reflect on where he stood. A very junior member of Baker & McKenzie’s Banking and Finance practice group, Patterson was currently 70-80% behind his billable hour requirement for 2009. In fact, he has still failed to bill the 2000 hours the firm requires per year over the course of his 21 months at the firm.

With no book of business (Patterson had not heard a client’s voice since graduating from Fordham Law School in 2007) and unemployed colleagues across New York in the thousands, his options were next to none. With that, he quickly crafted an email to Baker & McKenzie’s firm chairman voicing support for the changes being made. Allegedly, it was signed “Thank you sir, may I have another? Very truly yours, Evan”.