Pic: U. Chicago
It was pretty hard to miss this week’s big news: unemployment crashed through the 10% barrier, hitting 10.2% in October – the highest level since 1983 (and, of course, worse than predicted). Underemployment also hit record levels, with the number of self-reported disenfranchised and under-utilized people reaching 17.5%.
Republicans jumped on the numbers as a sign that Obama’s package has failed, and the White House countered that it has saved almost 700,000 jobs. But that claim doesn’t even come close to addressing the original estimates and is completely unmeasurable. Still, the administration is reconsidering ideas it had previously rejected, like a highway bill and a business tax credit for new hires, even as they ask for two versions of a budget: one with flat spending and another with a 5% cut.
Law firms got their place in the MSM sun this week, as Bloomberg used a former law-firm employee as an example of increased migration to areas perceived as having jobs:
Some people are pulling up stakes and moving to where they think the job prospects may be brighter. Beth Rubin, 41, lost her position as a receptionist at the law firm Goldstein Bershad & Fried, PC in Southfield, Michigan, in October. The resident of Ferndale, a Detroit suburb, is now selling her furniture and moving to Georgia. “I’m looking to get a job in Georgia, and I don’t know about the job market there, but I can tell you Michigan is horrible,” Rubin said in a telephone interview.
Of course, anything has to be better than Detroit.
More on the highs and lows in the legal sector, after the jump.
Continued…
Posted in Business of Law.
Tagged with cleary gottlieb, cravath, day pitney, dickstein shapiro, goodwin procter, layoffs, morgan lewis, the month in layoffs, winston & strawn.
By lawshucks
– November 6, 2009
Pic: Sweet Awesome Tours
Last week we mentioned in passing the possibility of bonuses:
Still, there’s certainly reason for those who have survived this brutal year to believe that they’ll get a little something extra for the effort this year. At Law Shucks, we’re counting on two factors outweighing (if not at least counterbalancing) the rough year for firms: bonuses would be a strong signal that the firms have kept the people they really want, and want them to stay; and the S&P 500 is up 14% year-to-date, even after this crappy week (S&P down 4%). While we’ve said all along that even though most of the profit this year has come from the expense side, those are still good results for clients (and even better counting from the March lows).
That was based on earlier reports that DLA Piper had announced that something would be paid and Slaughter & May’s announcement of five percent bonuses.
Since then, Cravath announced its bonuses and that opened the floodgates for the naysayers.
After the jump, we rebut and make the case for bonuses.
Continued…
Posted in Business of Law.
Tagged with bonuses, cravath.
By lawshucks
– November 6, 2009
Posted in Administration.
By lawshucks
– November 5, 2009
Posted in Administration.
By lawshucks
– November 5, 2009
Layoffs at major law firms were down in October after the brief uptick in September.
However, there were confirmed stealth layoffs and layoffs without official numbers reported, as firms inexplicably continue to try to be coy.
The charts after the jump.
Continued…
Posted in Business of Law.
Tagged with akin gump, cooley godward, crowell & moring, drinker biddle, foley & lardner, layoffs, nixon peabody, paul weiss, the month in layoffs, wilmerhale.
By lawshucks
– November 4, 2009
Posted in Administration.
By lawshucks
– November 4, 2009
Posted in Administration.
By lawshucks
– November 3, 2009
Below are our top posts for October. As usual, we don’t include our regular features like This Week in Layoffs and The Month in Layoffs in the Top 10 posts for the month. A number of posts from the Laid Off Diarywould also make the ranking, but we exclude that too. Go to its dedicated page to catch up on the whole series.
10 – You Call This Hype? – We thought this would have ranked higher, considering the hype the original hype article got (and the amount of work that went into analyzing pretty much every associate arrival and departure at Nixon Peabody over the past nine months or so).
Continued…
Posted in Administration.
Tagged with akin gump, goldman sachs, microsoft, nixon peabody, paul weiss, proskauer, wachtell, wildman harrold.
By lawshucks
– November 3, 2009
Pic: U. Chicago
Last week we wrote that jobless claims were higher than expected and that predicting anything with any degree of confidence seemed pointless. This week, the number of people receiving unemployment benefits was lower than expected, the lowest levels in seven months, and that was before announcement that benefits will be extended again. Still, the best that can be said is that the cuts are slowing.
Companies are cutting fewer jobs as they see more evidence of a recovery, helped by government stimulus efforts and less weakness in housing and manufacturing. While a separate report today showed the economy expanded for the first time in more than a year, a rebound in hiring may take longer to materialize.
So while things bounced around unpredictably in the broader market, we had two notable announcements in law-firm innovations this week, so we’ll cut right to them after the jump.
Continued…
Posted in Business of Law.
Tagged with dla piper, foley hoag, kaye scholer, layoffs, mcguire woods, reed smith, slaughter & may, this week in layoffs, wachtell, weil gotshal.
By lawshucks
– October 30, 2009
Remember when we told you about the guy who would rather flip a coin than split the difference?
He won that flip (and saved himself $3.75 million), but things haven’t been going so well since. The coin flip was about the fee on a $375 million loan for the development of the Yellowstone Mountain Club, which ended up being a disaster that only got worse when the developer, Tim Blixseth, and his wife started feuding. Who knew building an ultra (see details after the jump) posh resort as the economy cratered wouldn’t work out?
After the jump, some of the items for sale in an auction that blows away the Lehman sale.
Continued…
Posted in Deals.
Tagged with bankruptcy, credit suisse, skadden.
By lawshucks
– October 29, 2009
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