Pic: U. Chicago
Perhaps our Layoff Tracker hasn’t frightened you enough. Maybe even the countless articles on ATL or the WSJ Law Blog or every other publication serving the legal niche haven’t convinced you there is a crisis brewing.
Are you sensible enough to be afraid when a mainstream publication starts writing about BigLaw layoffs?
The Chicago Tribune finally caught on to the rising tide we and others have been covering. The firm interviewed Kirkland & Ellis‘s Kevin Evanich (Wisconsin-Milwaukee BA ’76, Northwestern JD ’80), a senior partner in the M&A group, and his predictions are just as dire as everyone else’s.
Evanich says it’s the quietest time he’s seen in his 30 years of practice. According to the Trib, things are tough all over:
lucrative work advising clients on mergers and acquisitions and other corporate transactions, such as repackaging mortgages into securities, has nearly dried up because of the meltdown in the financial sector. The normally steady field of litigation has not had enough upside to offset the loss of corporate business. The only corporate lawyers who are busy now are involved in restructuring debt or bankruptcies.
In addition to contraction by layoffs, DLA Piper‘s joint CEO Lee Miller (Georgetown BSBA ’69, Georgetown JD ’73), warns of reduced hiring. The firm has cut its incoming class from 100 down to 60-70. (Although those of us who were at firms in the mid to late 90s know how that worked out when there were no talented mid-levels around a few years after the troubles of the early 90s).
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