Fenwick & West Cuts Staff Positions
Fenwick & West laid off 36 staff on Thursday, and said it was freezing associate salaries for the upcoming year. But unlike every other major San Francisco Bay Area law firm, including Cooley Godward Kronish and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, it did not cut attorneys. Gordon Davidson, chairman of the nearly 300-lawyer Mountain View, Calif., firm, said Fenwick didn't cut attorneys because of the lessons of the dot-com boom, during which the firm doubled its hiring and then was forced to cut associates in 2001.
