Fenwick & West Laying Off Nearly 10% of Attorneys, Staff (2)

Fenwick & West is laying off nearly 10% of its attorneys and staff as the tech-focused firm faces fallout from stalled transactional markets.

After an “assessment of current and anticipated future demand,” the firm made the decision to reduce its workforce, firm chair Richard Dickson said in an email viewed by Bloomberg Law sent Tuesday. The reductions will affect “just under” 10% of the firm’s professionals, he said.

Fenwick is a Silicon Valley stalwart and over the years became one of the prominent firms advising technology companies. Its clients have included Apple Inc., Oracle Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc. It joins tech-focused law firms such as Cooley and Goodwin Procter in reducing jobs as transactional markets fell from record-highs.

“Once more, we find the regrettable reality of yet another tech-centric firm being hit by layoffs,” said Summer Eberhard, a California-based legal recruiter at Lateral Link. “Any firm that is heavily invested in industries that are still lagging in the current economy may come to this same resolution,” she said, noting that many of those firms have already reduced their headcount.

Like others, Fenwick hired aggressively to meet demand for the firm’s services that surged from 2020 to early 2022. Dickson said in his email that the recruiting spree had resulted in “many more attorneys” and additional professional staff.

“Unfortunately, as transactional activity slowed in 2022 and 2023, our talent levels became misaligned with our existing and projected client demand, particularly in our large transactional practice,” Dickson said. “I take responsibility for this and am truly sorry that those decisions have led to a significant impact on our people today.”

While Fenwick’s layoffs shouldn’t “sound alarms with associates that their firm may be next,” it’s noteworthy that part of the firm’s calculus was an assessment of their current and anticipated future demand, Eberhard said.

“The fact is that corporate transactional practices at firms are slow but I am cautiously optimistic that we have already hit the bottom and work will be picking back up over the next year,” she said.

People affected by the Fenwick’s announcement will receive a minimum of 13 weeks base pay and health benefits, with the longest-tenured employees receiving more—up to a maximum of 40 weeks, Dickson said.