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!
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