So said Patricia Glaser, a name partner at embattled Christensen Glaser when talking about a recent raise for associates:
"Two Los Angeles law firms recently raised their first-year associate salaries while facing key partner departures and a federal criminal probe into whether lawyers engaged in illegal wiretapping.
"Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger, whose top rainmaker, Bertram Fields, has said he is a subject of the criminal investigation, has agreed to raise salaries to $135,000. In the past month, the 90-attorney firm has lost about a dozen lawyers, including two members of its management committee.
"Separately, Christensen, Glaser, Fink, Jacobs, Weil & Shapiro boosted rates after seven associates left and as name partner Louis "Skip" Miller announced this month he would leave the firm. (The firm changed its name from Christensen, Miller, Fink, Jacobs, Glaser, Weil & Shapiro.)
Christensen Glaser’s managing partner, Terry Christensen, is the only lawyer to be indicted in the wiretapping probe.
[snip]
"Patricia Glaser, a name partner at Christensen Glaser, said that the new salaries were effective in April, but she refused to draw a connection to the ongoing investigation or Miller’s departure. ‘A lot of other firms raised their base salaries,’ she said. ‘We may be slow, but we’re not stupid.’
"But several former associates at Christensen Glaser said lawyers at the firm are sending out their resumes."