Legal News

For Firms From London to Chicago, the Struggle Continues

By Ashby Jones

We’re a little wary of flooding these pages with every last tale of gloom-and-doom from the world of BigLaw. After all, we’ve arguably given you your dose for the week with Wednesday’s spotlight on the AmLaw 100 numbers, which weren’t pretty (click here and here).

But there are a couple more stories out that we’d be remiss in not showing you. The Financial Times on Wednesday featured a piece about the UK-based firms, which have arguably gone even further than their U.S.-based counterparts in job-slashing. For perhaps the first time in our lives, we felt a modicum of sympathy for law-firm partners, after reading this excerpt:

For the partners forced to leave, the shock has been profound. Recruiters report a surge in demand from former partners who, as Kevin Cooper of Palm Legal International Consulting, puts it, “have found themselves in a situation they never thought they would be in”. He describes the shock of a securitisation specialist who has been asked to leave only five years after becoming a partner. “He was absolutely mortified,” he says. “He thought you had a job from the time you became a partner in your early 30s until you were 55.”

We can only imagine. Say what you’d like about law-firm partners, most have worked their tails off, made enormous sacrifices, and — yes — are pretty darn good lawyers. To find yourself out on your can after having grabbed a piece of the brass ring, must, for some, trigger nothing short of despair.

An article in today’s Chicago Tribune takes a look at the AmLaw numbers at the Windy City firms. The results were grim across Chicago, but not as bad as in cities like New York, where firms arguably had greater exposure to the financial sector.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 30, 2009 (boomark / email).