Especially if I’m a sacked employee from yet another rout at US law firms..
The National Law Journal reports
Latest Layoff Wave Sees 300 Attorneys, 500 Staff Cut
The law firm layoffs haven’t let up.
Four major firms announced job cuts on Monday, totaling more than 300 attorneys and 522 support staff.
White & Case plans to cut a total of 200 associates and 200 administrative staff. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius cut 55 attorneys and 161 staffers. King & Spalding cut 37 associate spots, as well as 85 support staff firmwide, while K&L Gates eliminated 36 associates and 76 staffers in its U.S. offices.
Just over a week into March, it appears that the month won’t provide any reprieve from the mounting legal job losses. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the legal sector lost 4,200 jobs in February and 1,300 in January.
Several legal consultants said they don’t see the job cuts slowing down any time soon. Peter Zeughauser, a consultant based in California, said the layoff pain will last at least until the fourth quarter of 2009. William Brennan, a legal consultant with Altman Weil, said some law firms had held back on cuts, hoping to weather the storm.
Read more at the link above.
These stories also came in today….and none of it makes cheery reading
Bingham cuts 39 lawyers and staff
White & Case, K&L Gates, Morgan Fire 291 Lawyers (Update2)
731 Lawyers and Staff Laid Off Today at Morgan Lewis, K&L Gates and White & Case
Hildebrandt: Cut Associate Salaries Now
“If you don’t cut associate starting salaries now, you are nuts. They were too high. Now we have to pay for it.”
Bradford Hildebrandt’s admonition on costly associate salaries was repeated over and over as top law firm management met at Hildebrandt’s Law Firm Leaders Forum in San Francisco last week to talk about the long-term implications of the economic downturn and the actions firms will need to take in order to adapt to a changing world.
Stealth Layoff Watch: Davis Polk & Wardwell Bring Layoffs into the Vault 5
Last week, we mentioned that it doesn’t look like top Manhattan firms are immune to the layoff bug. Today, we can report some of the things that have been happening at Davis Polk & Wardwell over the past few months.
Stealth layoffs started happening at DPW in December. Corporate associates (notably, associates in Capital Markets, Credit, and M&A) were laid off the way it used to work in Biglaw. Laid off associates were told that their performance was not up to standards and given three months "notice" to find a new job.
