Merrill Lynch Cuts 6 in Law Dept

Update: http://lawshucks.com/2009/02/01/merrill-lynch-layoffs-revisited

The Lawyer is reporting that Merill Lynch is laying off six senior attorneys.  The cuts are reportedly a result of reorganization in the wake of Merrill’s acquisition by Bank of America.  The affected lawyers:

• New York associate general counsel Carlos Morales (according to this profile, he attended Yale and Columbia (don’t know which order) and previously worked at the SEC),
• general counsel of litigation and employment Barry Mandel,
• co-head of global litigation John Eisenberg (joined ML in 1997 from Kirkpatrick & Lockhart; Cornell BA ‘74, Virginia JD ‘77),
• director and senior counsel Chris Haas,
• and “two more legal heads.”

Layoffs in corporate law departments aren’t often publicized.  There are a few reasons for that: there simple isn’t the market transparency there is at law firms (in fact, it’s common for people to have no idea how much their peers make); inhouse counsel are cost centers, not revenue generators, so even the financial news services aren’t as concerned with the impact; law departments tend to comprise a minuscule portion of the total headcount, so it’s hard to segregate the numbers; and, of course, there’s the mythical job security, which is supposedly greater inhouse.

This is one area we’d absolutely love to cover in more detail.  There are plenty of sources for law-firm layoffs (but ours is the best aggregator, of course) but not much information at all about the inhouse layoffs.  Send those tips in!

Related posts:

1. Merrill Lynch Layoffs Revisited
2. BlackRock Crams Down Merrill Lynch
3. Layoffs Hit Inhouse, Too
4. Spending Cuts Only Affecting Other Guys
5. Barclays Brings in Law Dept Costcutter