Posted on 01/26/2009 1:28:39 PM PST by Gracey
Edited on 01/26/2009 1:30:08 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Every cloud has a silver lining!
Couldn’t happen to a more useful bunch.
After upending a succession of U.S. industries, the recession has arrived for U.S. law firms, which have long seen themselves as partially insulated from economic downturns. In December, Thelen LLP, another large San Francisco firm, also shut down for good, citing recessionary pressures. Later that month, Thacher Proffitt & Wood LLP, a 160-year-old New York firm, announced that it was closing. Dreier LLP of New York is dissolving after its founder was arrested for fraud.
Your browser may not support display of this image.Pay cuts and layoffs are becoming commonplace. This month, Clifford Chance laid off more than 70 lawyers in London; Cooley Godward Kronish LLP fired 50 lawyers and 60 other staffers; and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP let go of 65 staff members across the U.S.
Less lawyers in this world? What a wonderful world.
Everyone loves to rip on lawyers, until they spend years eff-ing up their own lives and expect someone to fix things for them (cheaply).
agreed maybe the ACLU could go out of business too.
maybe there is a silver lining with these going out and liberals unable to move to our red southern , midwest states
Not sure I can post the entire article or a link. I think one has to be a subscriber? It’s really cool what’s happening to these ambulance chasers.
This firm has been in business for 118 years.
The sound you do not hear is that of the world’s smallest violin...
GOOD. The weaker the legal profession becomes, freer and better off we all are. Disgusting what has become of it.
LOL. My ears are still in good shape :-)
Just to reiterate, people are losing jobs during a recession? Say it ain’t so!
Heller was not an ambulance chaser firm!
Just goes to show you there’s a silver lining behind every dark cloud.
Trust me, many of the lawyers have been scooped up by other firms. It’s the support staff - the receptionists, secretaries, accounting clerks and other “little people” that are now pounding the pavement looking for jobs, in a field that isn’t doing much hiring. I know three top-notch secretaries competing for the same legal secretary job, which is paying about $20,000/year less than they were making at Heller and Thelan. And that’s the BEST job offer currently out there.
You’d think they’d hang on to handle all those ‘discrimination’ cases that the passage of the “Lilly Ledbetter” legislation would bring with it.
Imagine! No statute of limitations!!!!
yup
“These bottom-feeders are finally getting their comeuppance — and they’re freaking out. Anyone noticed the recent uptick in law firms running TV ads that urge consumers to join class-action suits against companies? These firms are scrambling to create new revenue streams — even if such frivolous suits further undermine this country’s already-reeling corporations at the worst possible time.”
Comments by reader Paul Davis
Lawyers can be useful, especially when attacked by other lawyers or the gov’t.
The legal lottery concept is total BS.
Conservatives should be legally attacking the Executive Branch of the Federal Gov’t to make Congress do its job (not that the outcome will be any different).
Interesting, Right Cal Gal. Here’s a little more:
In November, New York legal giant Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP announced it was reducing year-end bonuses for junior lawyers, and that it wouldn’t raise its billing rates in 2009. Latham LLP, one of the nation’s highest-grossing firms, said in December that associates would not get raises in 2009 — a move followed by many other firms.
“More firms are in a fragile condition than I’ve ever seen,” says William Brennan, a law-firm consultant with Altman Weil Inc. and formerly chief financial officer at two large Philadelphia firms.
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