Unfortunately, our expectation that the layoffs would start off slowly was proven wrong. On Wednesday, word came out about a midsized English firm, Freeth Cartwright, that was laying off 45 staff and 15 lawyers. We thought that was the first crack in the dam, then we heard about Kirkland & Ellis‘s laying off 25.
That was just the beginning. Thursday saw
- Clifford Chance lay off up to 80 in London;
- Baker & McKenzie lay off six in New York;
- Dickstein Shapiro lay off ten in New York and Washington; and
- Parker Poe lay off 13 in Charlotte.
All have been added to the spreadsheet in the Layoff Tracker. We’ll be updating it substantially over the weekend to include charts for year to date and to move the historical stuff down. Let us know if you have any requests or suggestions on how you’d like the data presented. And, of course, feel free to send the tips in directly.