Legal News

A White & Case Study

By Ashby Jones

The NYT weighed in over the weekend with an up-close look at New York’s White & Case, a BigLaw firm that has, like so many others, gone through multiple rounds of layoffs.

Of most interest to us: the focus not on the layoffs themselves — over which so much ink has been spilled — but the mood at the firm post-reductions. Writes reporter Alan Feuer:

Months later, the corridors of White & Case are quiet, the happy buzz of business having gradually been replaced by a melancholy pall of diminished billable hours. Many office doors are shut - not because of meetings, but, as one associate put it, so that "the man with the ax" cannot find the occupants. Type-A partners, once glued to their BlackBerrys, suddenly have time for their spouses and their children; ladder-climbing junior lawyers linger over lunch.

"People are shellshocked," said one top partner at the firm who, like many of its current and former lawyers, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. "If they survived the first two rounds, they're happy to have a job, but are still very nervous. And if their phones don't ring, if their work doesn't come back with a vengeance, they fear they aren't long for this world."

Feuer does a nice job of capturing a singular emotion pulsing through firms these days: fear. He writes that:

tensions have become so fierce that some people now fear staying home even if they are sick. Market forces have replaced "the social contract," a top partner there said: camaraderie is "not terribly strong," because "people are very scared."

People are “very scared,” it seems, because there’s so much uncertainty in the market — an uncertainty that seems to have firms’ decision-makers nervous. Folks like White & Case chairman Hugh Verrier — who serves as a focal point for the Times story — don’t seem to know what’s going to happen to the billable hour and whether — and to what degree — work is going to leave them forever for smaller, less-expensive firms. "Is there a paradigm shift?" he asked. "I don't think anyone has a monopoly on what the future's going to bring."

Couple other points to raise in light of this story: We love that Covington’s Philip Howard says he’s “not really interested in the business of the law,” and that George B. Case may have “have invented the squeeze play on the baseball field at Yale.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 08, 2009 (boomark / email).