This site, and this page and its sub-pages in particular, tracks law firm layoffs, particularly since the beginning of the most-recent downturn in January, 2008.
Major law firms are turning out to be just as susceptible to general economic conditions as every other industry. Historically, layoffs by top-tier firms were kept quiet and were done on a one-off basis. We’re trying to shed a little light on the situation.
As of October 25O, 2009, over 13,923 people have been laid off by major law firms (5,443 lawyers / 8,480 staff) since January 1, 2008. Read about the road to 10,000 in this piece from April 13, when we crossed the milestone.
11,931 (4,513 / 7,418) people have been laid off from law firms in calendar 2009.
199 (39 lawyers / 160 staff) have been laid off in October.
We have added an extensive mid-year review with detailed analysis of all law firm layoffs through June 30 of this year.
Copyright Information and Custom Reports
Law Shucks Layoff Tracker by Law Shucks is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lawshucks.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://lawshucks.com/about/contact/.
Custom reports are available. Contact us with any requests.
Index
As traffic has increased, this page’s performance has diminished. In order to increase performance, we’ve moved many of the interactive historical charts to separate pages.
- Analysis
- Current and Prior Months
- Rolling 12 Months
- Top Ten Firms by Layoff Count
- Methodology
- Raw Data
- Credits
Analysis
In addition to the aggregated mid-year review, we write monthly summaries of layoff activity. (June was skipped and incorporated in the mid-year)
Current and Prior Month
Law Shucks BigLaw Layoff Tracker – October 09
Weekly summaries for October:
Law Shucks BigLaw Layoff Tracker – September 09
;
Weekly summaries for September:
Charts for earlier periods:
- August 09
- July 09
- June 09
- May 09
- April 09
- March 09
- February 09
- January 09
- 4Q 08 (October-December 08)
- 3Q 08 (July-September 08)
- 2Q 08 (April-August 08)
- 1Q 08 (January-March 08)
12 Months’ Rolling Layoffs
See also:
Top ten by total layoffs
See also:
- All top ten lists
- Top ten by attorneys laid off
- Top ten by staff laid off
- Top ten by rounds of layoffs
Methodology
- A number of events, like the Heller dissolution, aren’t included here because those are complete failures of a firm, not just selective layoffs.
- We track totals of associates and staff (and in the case of Jenner & Block, partners), without distinguishing.
- We treat layoffs of staff attorneys and contract attorneys as staff layoffs. Attorney counts are for associates, counsel, and partners.
- When a range is reported, we report the high end of the range and revise downward as warranted. Frankly, the total number is already understated due to “stealth” layoffs.
- 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.
- Right now, we’re tracking all layoffs since January 2008. As time goes by, we’ll consider shortening the time frame. You’ll also find articles on the main site that analyze the data by various attributes. We’ll try to link back to those from here.
- The data are attributed to the best of our knowledge; if you see any mistakes, let us know. We try to attribute to the first site to report, but often we just attribute to the easiest source for us to validate.
Raw Data
The table below includes all of the data we track. This is the source for the total number at the top of the page. In life, tradeoffs must be made. The tradeoff this time is that you now gain the ability to sort the columns as you choose but you can no longer click directly on the link. Zoho is working on it and we’ll implement that as soon as they do.
Credits
Many thanks to Above the Law, the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog, and ALM’s American Lawyer Layoff List. We got the idea from TechCrunch’s tech industry layoff tracker (but have given up on icharts for now, in favor of zoho). Please post corrections and additions in the comments or send an email to tips@lawshucks.com. In case you hadn’t noticed, we have no design skills whatsoever. If you can help, please let us know.
