Above the Law is keeping track of layoffs in the practice of law. The WSJ law blog speculated that yesterday may have been the “darkest day ever for big law firms” with more than 200 lawyers losing their jobs. Apparently, the practice of law isn’t immune from layoffs this time around, either. I can only speculate that these layoffs are intimately related to the contraction of the financial sector.
200 doesn’t sound like much to me. My view is that the economic foundation of the large law firm practice have been questionable for several years. And the wind is blowing.