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Blogging Forces Change in Law Firm Layoff Policies

By Carolyn Elefant

Companies are fast learning that in an Internet Age, there's no such thing as a "confidential" memo. As the Wall Street Journal explains today (and as has been previously discussed here by The National Law Journal), employees are leaking confidential company information about layoffs to blogs and Internet news sites nearly as quickly as those memos are issued. And it's not just businesses that are impacted. Increasingly, law firms are finding that the "thick gray (suited) wall of silence" that once protected internal communications and law firm decisions has been penetrated by the power of the Internet. Call it the ATL (Above the Law) effect. Indeed, the WSJ recognizes that ATL has become the number one repository of law firm leaks. From the article: In June, leaders of Portland, Ore.-based law firm Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt told only three or four people internally about plans to lay off 19 of its 400 employees and cut the salaries of associates. Still, at 9:11 a.m. on June 15, just 41 minutes after the first employees were notified of the layoffs, the law firm received an email from AboveTheLaw.com, a legal Web site. "We had gone to extraordinary lengths to contain this because...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on July 20, 2009 (boomark / email).