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Firms Increasingly Making Partners Pay to Leave

By Gina Passarella, Christine Simmons and Roy Strom
July 01, 2016

As law firms look to protect themselves from cash walking out the door in a low-demand market, they are increasingly looking at methods to discourage lateral departures and, perhaps more importantly, are enforcing those methods more frequently.

To a point, consultants say, moves to claw back bonuses from departing lawyers ' like what Legal Week recently reported happened when Kirkland & Ellis sought the return of a $120,000 bonus from a partner leaving for Latham & Watkins (see, “Kirkland Asks Asia Partner to Pay Back $120,000 Bonus Before Leaving for Latham“) ' should not come as a surprise to partners who agree to terms that serve to protect the overall financial health of their firms.

But the lengths to which some firms have gone to financially penalize a lawyer looking to move to another firm could backfire when those firms attempt to recruit new talent, consultants say.

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