Looks like the major law firms in the USA are pitching staff overboard. These corporate Zepplins have hit hard times as the money dries up. According to Law Shucks, this year 2,289 people have been laid off from the top tier firms as of this posting.
It’s prob’ly a good time to getcher self a cheap deevorce, seein’s how there oughtta be a bunch’a hungry attorneys scratchin’ in the gutters.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Parasites are either fat or dead. Dead is a good option.
The next turn of the screw will be like Oklahoma in the Dust Bowl. Banks with sour mortgages and landlords without rent will retain the worthless obligations on their books as Official assets rather than pursue defaults. A steep economic slide will pause, paper will shuffle from the adept to the clueless, then behold a precipitous plunge. The three month Federal moratorium on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack forclosures was hailed in January as “a reversal of the foreclosure trend.” What happens when the cuffs come off and remaining employees seek a justification for their retention?
You’ve got a seriously warped sense of the job market in the legal profession. Just as there is a jobless rate amongst chemists is perhaps 30%, the legal guys have their own version of the ACS to spin lead into gold.
Creating the myth of the highly paid lawyer is perhaps far more profitable for schools and associations since armies of people pay absurd amounts of money to end up on the unemployment line. I’ve met many a cashier who attended a low tier law school.
It’s feast or famine in the legal profession, contingent upon where you got your degree. If you attend a top ten school, something like 99% of the graduates are placed. If you’re in a second tier school, you’d better be in the top 10% of your class.
Third tier? Well hopefully you’re going to go to work for your Uncle, because NO ONE will hire you.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119040786780835602.html
P.S Lawyers are the only one’s who will protect your rights when no one else will (for a fee). You think corporate America is bad now? Without lawyer’s you’d already be in a reprogramming gulag in western Kansas.
Hi Nick,
Actually, I’m not anti-lawyer. I have friends who are lawyers and have an excellent relationship with several lawyers in the business context. And I’m very much a fan of the ACLU. I have seen good lawyering from both sides of the fence. Watching a good lawyer in action is fascinating.
I posted this because I do not recall a time when the top tier law firms were culling their headcount in such a big way.
Morrison & Foerster (MoFo in the trade) had over 1000 lawyers. On 28 January they were 53 lawyers, 25 associates, and 148 staffers smaller. Other big names hit were Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; Cooley Godward Kronish; Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati; and Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. We could save the profession with massive Washington show trials of finance bankers and hedge fund managers.
The perfect law firm is Momser Goniff Fresser and Schnorer or Mèirleach Tuilí Craosaire and Bitheolaíoch (New York and Boston, respectively).
Uncle Al, I like the massive show trial idea. Think of the pageantry!
A steep economic slide will pause, paper will shuffle from the adept to the clueless, then behold a precipitous plunge.
Well put.
Seems like the young folks will have to make it on less than $160,000/year.
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202428296289
Follow-up: I mentioned this 160k figure to an attorney friend who works at a MAJOR pharmaceutical company. He said virtually nobody makes that kind of money to start (<5%). Yet here we have another bogus article touting off the curve starting salaries like they were commonplace!
Is it all a conspiracy to entice young people into the field?
Gotta have some kind of grad school for the geography and polysci majors to go to. Boston Legal has quite an appeal to impressionable young people.