It’s like a nightmare, isn’t it? It just keeps getting worse and worse.
The week started out quietly with some minor players, then two more huge layoffs by UK firms DLA Piper and Lovells. Holland & Knight closed out the week (for purposes of this update, at least) with a layoff of 243 people – 70 lawyers, 173 staffers. That brings the Tampa firm into our Top 10 list at #2 (bumping Wilson Sonsini).
The WSJ Law Blog wonders whether yesterday was the worst day ever. They’re not quite right. We’re counting 627 layoffs in BigLaw alone for the day – we had 661 on January 29 (Linklaters 270, MoFo 201, Fish & Richardson 79, Ropes & Gray 106, Clifford Chance 5).
At least this isn’t the worst week ever (with a few hours to go on a Friday, that’s not a safe bet, though). There were 858 for the week ending 1/30/08.
* Didn’t add Hinshaw & Culbertson (the usual reason: never heard of them), even though the Illinois-based firm laid off 11 attorneys and 17 staff. The firm reportedly has (had) 490 attorneys and 1,002 “workers” – not sure whether that includes the attorneys and/or partners or not.
* Ditto for Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps, which laid off 12 attorneys and 15 staffers in San Diego and San Francisco. One partner, at least one (by deduction) first year, and the rest of the attorneys were junior. The firm reportedly had about 190 attorneys.
* Added Nixon Peabody, where everybody is a winner – except the 20 lawyers and 36 staff laid off on Wednesday (~700 total attys).
* Added Lovells, which laid off 94 – 18 “fee earners,” 6 “professional support staff,” and 70 staff. When we do breakouts, professional support staff in the UK will count as attorneys, by the way (~1,500 total attys).
* Added Faegre & Beson for laying off 29 of its 500 lawyers.
* Didn’t add Neal Gerber (usual reason), which laid off 10 of its 200 attorneys.
* Added Bryan Cave – 58 attorneys of 1,200; Dechert – 19 of 1,000; Goodwin Procter – 38 attys/36 staff (900 total attys); and DLA Piper for 180 – 80 attorneys, 100 staff (3,700 total attys).
We’ve been clear all along that it’s a “BigLaw” Layoff Tracker. Part of the reason it’s limited is because of the current pain in the ass of entering the information. The other (bigger, probably) part is elitism. We don’t know anything about most regional or small firms and suffer from the hubris that our readers care about the same things we do. What say you? Assuming we can make it practical, do you want information about all firms included or should we stick to BigLaw?
And yes, we know you want attorney counts broken out separately from staff. That’s near the top of our list of priorities, along with total headcounts for those who can’t figure out that 170 from White & Case is relatively less significant than 201 from MoFo. That being said, if you’re the type of person who wants it broken out just because you think staff “don’t count” – this probably isn’t the site for you.
* 806 for the week
* 1,071 for the month
* 2,614 for the year
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Yo LS, this site is amazing – keep up the hardwork on tracking this stuff and your other articles. I agree with your "arbitrary" standard for BigLaw layoffs – there is a lot of data out there now and there has to be some measurement standard. what a gruesome world – thanks for putting all this together.
Yo LS, this site is amazing – keep up the hardwork on tracking this stuff and your other articles. I agree with your "arbitrary" standard for BigLaw layoffs – there is a lot of data out there now and there has to be some measurement standard. what a gruesome world – thanks for putting all this together.
Ditto gargamel – I really like this new site. Thanks for all the hard work.
Ditto gargamel – I really like this new site. Thanks for all the hard work.
I like the idea of keeping the tracker to BigLaw. However, how exactly are you defining that term? AmLaw 200? Vault 100? Doesn't really matter to me. Just curious.
And I concur with the others–great work here. While Above the Law's new comment policy seems to have helped stem some of the immaturity, I still prefer the big-boy attitude of this site.
I like the idea of keeping the tracker to BigLaw. However, how exactly are you defining that term? AmLaw 200? Vault 100? Doesn't really matter to me. Just curious.
And I concur with the others–great work here. While Above the Law's new comment policy seems to have helped stem some of the immaturity, I still prefer the big-boy attitude of this site.
Thanks for the support. We're pretty arbitrary about how we define BigLaw. It's basically what I and my friends think it is, based on our experience. For now, when I'm on the fence, I send an email to half a dozen people and ask them – majority wins.
The methodology gives a little information:
<a href=”http://lawshucks.com/layoff-tracker/#methodology<…” target=”_blank”>http://lawshucks.com/layoff-tracker/#methodology&… />
We don't exactly follow the AmLaw 100 or Vault rankings or anything else scientific. It's purely our subjective assessment of what constitutes "BigLaw." There are certainly firms toward the latter parts of those rankings that we just have never come across in our practice, so we don't think of them as BigLaw. If you want a firm added to the list, just send us the source and if it's reasonably close, we'll add it.
Thanks for the support. We're pretty arbitrary about how we define BigLaw. It's basically what I and my friends think it is, based on our experience. For now, when I'm on the fence, I send an email to half a dozen people and ask them – majority wins.
The methodology gives a little information:
<a href=”http://lawshucks.com/layoff-tracker/#methodology<…” target=”_blank”>http://lawshucks.com/layoff-tracker/#methodology&… />
We don't exactly follow the AmLaw 100 or Vault rankings or anything else scientific. It's purely our subjective assessment of what constitutes "BigLaw." There are certainly firms toward the latter parts of those rankings that we just have never come across in our practice, so we don't think of them as BigLaw. If you want a firm added to the list, just send us the source and if it's reasonably close, we'll add it.