The American Lawyer Magazine online has a new page worth bookmarking and checking into at least once a week
The page located at http://www.law.com/jsp/tal/PubArticleTAL.jsp?id=1202425647706
Provides readers with a list of firms who have laid off employees in 2008 and also any links to stories that the Law.com media group may have published about the layoffs
Here are some of the highlights or lowlights for 2008 .. depending which way you look at it
BALLARD SPAHR ANDREWS & INGERSOLL
Law Firms See More Layoffs, Departures of Staff and Associates
The Legal Intelligencer
June 5, 2008
BELL BOYD & LLOYD
Chicago’s Bell Boyd & Lloyd Lays Off 10 Associates
The National Law Journal
Nov. 3, 2008
Bell Boyd Confirms Layoffs
Above the Law
Oct. 30, 2008
BINGHAM MCCUTCHEN
Bingham McCutchen Lays Off 10 Staff Members
The Wall Street Journal Law Blog
July 30, 2008
Bingham Lays Off San Francisco Bay Area Staff
The National Law Journal
May 21, 2008
BLANK ROME
Law Firms See More Layoffs, Departures of Staff and Associates
The Legal Intelligencer
June 5, 2008
CADWALADER, WICKERSHAM & TAFT
Cadwalader Lays Off 96 More Lawyers
The American Lawyer
July 30, 2008
Cadwalader Laying Off 35 in Wake of Slumping Markets
New York Law Journal
Jan. 10, 2008
And while we are on the subject of layoffs; today’s news is that yet another San Francisco firm is facing troubles. We get the felling that there won’t be any law firms left in San Francisco soon.
The San Francisco Business Times writes:
Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP announced the first layoffs in its 145-year history, a further sign of distress coursing through the legal industry.
The San Francisco-based firm said it is laying off approximately 40 lawyers in its real estate, structured finance and corporate practices. The cuts — equal to about three percent of its total legal force — affect many of the firm’s 21 offices in eight countries.
Orrick also is laying off 35 staff members, equalling about 2.5 percent of its overall support workforce.
“We believe these actions are necessary to adapt to changes in the world economy and the demand for certain legal services,” Orrick said in a press release.
Like other law firms with practices in real estate, structured finance and corporate work, Orrick said the credit crunch and resulting turmoil on Wall Street cut into the number of transactions that had kept those attorneys busy.
“Unfortunately, our staffing levels in the affected practices still remained too high given the economic environment our clients and we face,” Orrick’s statement read.
And just in case we weren’t confused enough by the state of the US legal market – bloggers, firms and the mainstream media are spinning their own lines on what’s happening.
In the New York Times Jonathan Glater writes ..You know things are bad when even lawyers are getting laid off.
Law Firms Feel Strain of Layoffs and Cutbacks
Ivan K. Fong, chief legal officer of Cardinal Health, said his company was increasingly negotiating alternatives to hourly rates.
In downturns of years past, law firms exploited corporate failures and bitter, protracted lawsuits to keep busy and keep billing. But in this still-unfolding crisis, the embittered and the bankrupt have been relatively slow to appear, at least in court.
Law firms in turn are feeling the strain. Thelen and Heller Ehrman, two firms whose deep San Francisco roots extend back decades, have collapsed outright, in part because of the business slowdown. Each firm left several hundred lawyers out in the cold. Many others, including Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal and Katten Muchin Rosenman, two Chicago firms ranked among the nation’s hundred most profitable by American Lawyer magazine, and the international giant Clifford Chance have jettisoned dozens of associates.
Over at Am Law Daily they are reporting how well employment lawyers are faring in the current climate:
Employment Lawyers: "We’re Busier Than Ever"
Marc Mandelman, head of Proskauer Rose’s group advising companies on layoffs, got a call on Tuesday from a manufacturing company that wants to lay off a large number of employees in about a week and needs to know if they can do so without violating any federal laws.
On the other end of the spectrum, Mandelman also is advising a New York company planning to lay off at least 25 people sometime in February–that’s plenty of time to make sure they don’t discriminate against any class of employees or run afoul of federal notification laws
"This is pretty much all I’m doing these days," Mandelman says. "I’ve been doing this since 1999, and I’ve never seen anything like this before."
The AE Feldman Blog says:
Top Law Firms Emerging as Winners in Financial Meltdown
The country may be slipping into recession, but its boom time for a growing number of attorneys as the bailout is creating no shortage of work for a number of top firms. While the New York Times reports that a number of law firms are in fact cutting back and trimming their ranks, top bankruptcy attorneys, high-powered defense lawyers and regulatory law experts are emerging as winners in the financial meltdown. According to the NYT, firms that have cut jobs say, “the problem is simply that they have too many people with the wrong kinds of expertise at the wrong time.” Meanwhile, a select group of top firms are experiencing a deluge of litigation work since the crisis began, advising investors and lenders on their positions with troubled institutions and on a range of other bankruptcy related issues. In fact, International law firm, Fulbright & Jaworski’s 5th annual Litigation Trends Survey finds that 43% of corporate counsel surveyed expect an upswing in lawsuits, largely spurred by economic crises. Reuters quotes Fred Krebs, President of the Association of Corporate Counsel, as saying, “Everybody is going to be affected. To the extent there have been these meltdowns, there is going to be litigation.”
But over at Skeptic Lawyer the headline reads Law firms feeling the pinch in US
And as the weeks roll on to Christmas we’re bound to se more bad news and a lot more opinion
