Maybe no one will figure this out!
We’re on record with our take on stealth layoffs.
Gina Passarella at The Legal Intelligencer takes a critical look at the review process in rough times.
The [senior corporate] partner [at a Philadelphia firm] said he isn’t sure that firms are using performance reviews as a guise to make economic-based cuts. He said he thinks it’s much easier to tell someone they are being let go because of the economy and a lack of work rather than for issues personal to them.
I’m not sure it’s a duck, even though it walks, looks, and quacks like a duck.
Fortunately, at least one consultant sees things clearly.
Altman Weil consultant Thomas Clay said it would be “ludicrous” to think there aren’t performance issues all the time, regardless of the economy. And downsizing when there isn’t as much work just makes good business sense, he said.
More choice quotes after the jump.
Clay notes the “lack of appetite” to make cuts when times are good. He’s not the only consultant to think they’re necessary
Hildebrandt consultant Joseph Altonji said firms typically first cut larger groups of attorneys based more on capacity. So while they wouldn’t fire bankruptcy attorneys at the moment, they might get rid of real estate lawyers. Once a firm gets beyond those cuts, it starts to look at individuals and that’s where performance metrics come into play, he said.
“A lot of firms are certainly making a reduction of force right now clearly because it’s economically driven, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t looking at performance to help whittle down,” Altonji said.
In a fine case of making lemonade from lemons, Clay said performance issues
could work to some attorneys’ advantage. If they were laid off for not meeting a 2,000 or 2,200 billable hour requirement, a smaller firm with a lower billable hour requirement might be happy to get a well-trained attorney who would be able to thrive in the new environment.
I’m not sure how much comfort I’d take in that, but it points out the hypocrisy of firms who raise standards and force out previously acceptable associates in a misguided effort to deflect blame for the firms’ own management failures.
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HAHAHAHAHA Good one LS – great pic. Right on the heels of Wimpy. Keep them coming. As for performance reviews, Firms need to be more aggressive – for the last 5 years, they have been shifting over to the I Bank model of business, so why then not copy the IB Human Resources model. You don't produce, you're gone.
Well, sure, if you don't produce, you should get the boot… but if you do produce, you should at least have some job security–where in BigLaw you don't. Also, BigLaw work distribution should ensure that it's at least fair to all associates as this would cut down on backstabbing and unproductive competition. Some competition is good, but this squabbling that goes on at most BigLaw firms is not.
http://www.laidoffdiary.wordpress.com
There is, of course, a distinction between spending a lot of time on something, on the one hand, and adding value to it, on the other. History is filled with innovations that sparked almost immediately, on the one hand, while a fellow named Parkinson once coined the expression, “Work expands till time.”
Measuring hours, or at least asserted hours, does facilitate large, bureaucratic law firm administration. And the actual value of legal output – as opposed to legal input would be difficult to quantify. To the extent that large, bureaucratic law firm administration is a good thing, its effectiveness does have value; while actually quantifying the value of legal output could give rise to difficult questions which lawyers understandably wold prefer to avoid.
Under these circumstances, expecting associates to spend thousands of hours a year in legal services makes good sense. After all, they do have the alternative of becoming starving artists, internet bloggers, or the like.