Legal News

Law Firm Layoff Wednesday: Paying the (DLA) Piper Again

By Ashby Jones

It’s been a while since we had news of a big old three-figure law-firm layoff, but today such news has come our way, courtesy of Above the Law. According to ATL, the DLA Piper on Wednesday laid off 121 people — 21 lawyers and 100 staffers. The news bring the total number of layoffs at DLA to 440 in the U.S. and U.K.

Part of the DLA statement to the firm:

During the last year, we have experienced the worst economic period in generations. We have carefully gauged its impact on our business and responded by closely scrutinizing and reducing all of our material expenses across the board. We also reduced our workforce in February, attempting to preserve as many jobs as possible while avoiding any further reductions later in the year. Unfortunately economic weakness has continued, demand across the legal sector remains soft, and it is increasingly clear that major improvements in the US and global economy will not occur before 2010. We have therefore regretfully concluded that we must reduce our ranks now by 21 associates and 100 staff. While the firm’s financial position remains strong, a tightly-managed cost structure is essential to compete effectively during these uncertain times. We value all of our people and are very grateful for their contributions to the firm, and we have worked hard to consider and employ every reasonable measure to avoid lawyer and staff reductions.

Before we move on, LBers, let’s take a minute to ask something. We and others have chronicled the carnage across the land, focusing, perhaps understandably, on the lawyers who’ve been handed the pink slip. But what of the staffers? For every dozen lawyers that get laid off, it seems at least twice that number of staffers have gotten the axe as well.

So our question is two-fold. First, what were these people doing at firms? We assume it’s a grab-bag of folks who’ve been laid off, from legal secretaries to IT support staff to public-relations and marketing folks to paralegals to the guy who sits in the building across the street making trial demonstratives. But has any one category of these folks been hit harder than any other?

Perhaps more to the point, to what degree has the absence of these folks been missed — and how are firms compensating? Have first-years become, more than ever, glorified paralegals? Are partners transcribing their own dictation (is anyone still doing dictation at law firms?)? Or is the answer just this simple: that for every lawyer a firm cuts, it can also cut a corresponding handful of staffers?

Any thoughts? Keen insights? Pithy observations?

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