Law Firm Layoffs
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 at 09:10AM The recession is taking a steep toll on the legal profession, an industry long seen as immune from the ups and downs of the economy. Trying to weather the financial crisis, the nation's largest law firms are laying off attorneys and delaying the hiring of others. More than 3,000 lawyers have been laid off in the first three months of 2009. Just how bad is it out there? The first time this year that three consecutive business days passed without one of the nation's top law firms announcing job cuts came in mid-March, according to the Web site Lawshucks.com. They have counted 3,149 lawyer layoffs—just in the big firms, just in the first three months of the year. The New York City Bar Association, for the first time in its more than 135 years, is offering career counseling services to lawyers between jobs. Law firms are delaying the hiring of final-year law students, who normally are brought on a year in advance of graduation. Law students graduating with jobs this spring are being paid to delay their start date. Some are being told there will be no work until later in the year, maybe in 2010. For some Americans, there's not much sympathy for lawyers who are suddenly jobless. They make more money than the Average Joe, with the nation's million-or-so employed lawyers averaging $118,280 in 2007, or $56.87 an hour, according to the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the number of out-of-work lawyers is minuscule compared with the manufacturing sector, which had 945,000 unemployed workers last year, or the construction industry, which saw more than 1 million jobs disappear in 2008. But those careers don't require four years of college plus a degree from a law school that costs about $70,000 to attend. (Source: AP)
Melba Hughes (Hughes Consultants) an executive recruiting firm in Atlanta, talks about the opportunities and challenges in the job market with Scott Drake.
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