You’re Hired! We Want All of You!

After Latham & Watkins laid off 440 people last year, a phrase entered the legal lexicon: getting “Lathamed.” But Latham’s image got a boost during a goodbye party for its DC summer associates, as first reported by the blog Above the Law. At the fete, held at DC’s hip Donovan House hotel, all 18 of the law students who worked in the Washington office this summer learned they were getting full-time job offers. Twelve accepted on the spot and received bottles of Champagne from deputy Washington managing partner and former George W. Bush Justice Department appointee Alice Fisher. The offers, says Washington managing partner Eric Bernthal, are a “sign that things are very solid here.” However, as was the norm across all law firms, the size of this year’s group was nowhere near what it was in 2007, when Latham had 49 summer associates in DC.

Bernthal missed the party because storms delayed his flight out of Miami, but he received identical e-mails that night from several of the new recruits that read: “I’m coming to Latham! And it’s all because of you.”

Never too early to start buttering up the boss.

This article first appeared in the September 2010 issue of the Washingtonian.

Marisa M. Kashino

Senior Editor

Marisa M. Kashino joined Washingtonian in 2009 as a staff writer, and became a senior editor in 2014. She oversees the magazine’s real estate and home design coverage, and writes long-form feature stories. She was a 2020 Livingston Award finalist for her two-part investigation into a possible wrongful conviction stemming from a murder in rural Virginia.