When we do a layoff story virtually everyday .. including Sundays, we are sorry to say we’ve run out of clever headlines…
Here’s the layoff news from the past few days.
Baker & McKenzie to Cut up to 85 Jobs From London Office
Legal Week March 13, 2009
Baker & McKenzie’s London office has launched a formal redundancy consultation that will see the loss of between 60 and 85 jobs.
The month-long review, which will kick off on March 31, is expected to see between 20 and 30 legal jobs cut, around half of which will be in corporate. Trainees will not be affected.
In addition, the firm’s support staff headcount will be reduced by 20 to 25, while 20 to 30 secretarial jobs will be cut.
The reduction in headcount comes on top of January’s announcement that the U.S. firm’s London office was laying off up to 20 legal staff across a number of practice areas, including corporate.
Announcing the latest cuts in an e-mail to all staff, office managing partner Gary Senior warned that employees should expect salaries to be frozen for the next financial year. The firm also said that it does not anticipate paying an all-staff bonus this year.
Senior said in the e-mail: "During this process, we will be consulting with elected employee representatives. We want to hear what employee representatives have to say, and we will consult with them about relevant issues, including ways of avoiding redundancies and reducing the number of redundancies."
http://www.law.com/jsp/law/international/LawArticleIntl.jsp?id=1202429048075
Sidley Austin and Blank Rome Add to Latest Layoff Totals
The National Law Journal / March 13, 2009
The law firm layoff carnage continued on Thursday, with at least four firms handing out pink slips to attorneys and staffers.
Sidley Austin made the biggest cut of the day, laying off 89 associates and staff attorneys, as well as approximately 140 staffers in its U.S. offices, it confirmed on Thursday. Those cuts are in addition to "routine departures," according to an internal firm memo that was leaked to legal blog Above the Law.
Philadelphia-based Blank Rome confirmed that it cut 27 associate and 52 staff positions.
Two Texas-based law firms — Baker Botts in Houston and Gardere Wynne Sewell in Dallas — also felt the layoff pain. Both firms confirmed that they cut jobs, though neither would specify the number of positions eliminated. Above the Law reported that about 30 attorneys were laid off from Baker Botts, and 20 attorneys and 40 staffers were let go at Gardere. In a statement to the blog, Gardere said that the layoff totals in both categories are "substantially less."
The cuts at Sidley Austin were by far the biggest of the day, however. The firm is expecting its work slowdown to continue for 12 to 18 months. "The economy continues to present unprecedented challenges to the firm and its clients," the memo reads. "While the quality and diversification of our practice and our conservative financial management have put the firm in a strong position to deal with these challenges, we are not immune to the current turmoil."
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202429027429
London’s Norton Rose Explores Reduced Work Hours as Layoff Preventative
March 13, 2009
Norton Rose is set to institute a radical flex-work plan as the London law firm moves to head off job cuts. If approved, the groundbreaking measure, which would include partners, would see staff earn 85 percent of their salary for a four-day workweek
http://www.cltmag.com/londons-norton-rose-explores-reduced-work-hours-as-layoff-preventative.html
