More law firm layoffs. (Again, thank you to Parker Elmore for sending me this. Maybe I should hire Parker to be my official legal news correspondent......)
In any case, I'm seeing the layoffs at the big firm as similar to the drop in prices in the housing market. Big firms had enormous salaries, supported by huge staff. I'm not saying that having a huge staff isn't a nice place to be as a lawyer. What I am saying is that the cost of these large staffs was passed onto the clients, and the clients can no longer afford the cost, so the overhead has to be cut.
Boy, it sure was nice to have all those people helping me out when I was at BigLaw......
This is also an opportunity for the little firms. Corporations are now looking for ways to cut their overhead, and specifically to cut their legal bills. If small firms can step up and show corporations that not only do they cost less, but that they provide the added personal service not available at BigLaw, we can step into a marketplace that was unavailable just a few years back.
Here's the original post from WSJ's legal blog:
Law Blog - WSJ.com : Akin Gump to Cut 65 Staff; 'No Planned Attorney Layoffs'
Monday, January 19, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment