O.P.P.

jump out a window???? ATL needs some sensitivity training

my advice: go look for a new job. I mean, WTF.

This would never happen inTexas.

Elie, why do you suck so bad?

get used to asking the following question -

Would you like fries with that?

Horrible advice. Marin and Elie are two fucking idiot bozos. You both should jump out a window.

Any bets on how high Elie's fat ass would bounce?

I'm sorry, but was any of the attempted humor supposed to be funny? geezus christ this site has gone to shit.

ok, but what what i want to know is, how big will my bonus be? will S&C match skadden?

I agree that references are key. Secure them ASAP. Next, pick a new city to live in, so you can say, "I'm applying for a new job because I really needed to relocate to X city." Say your boyfriend moved there or you have to be near your sick grandma or you just couldn't stand one more cold winter. They won't ask you directly whether you were fired, so if you have some friends at your old firms who also won't bring it up, you might skate through just fine.

That said, in case you haven't noticed, there are no jobs. So, plan to settle for a small firm or working for the government. If the economy picks up, you may be able to come back to big law in a couple years, but why would you want to? You could also try applying for a clerkship (you'll likely have to settle for a state court judge at this point). If all else fails, you probably still have time to apply to an LLM program if you hurry. If that works out and you have money saved up, you can spend the next eight months on the beach.

this is my first time commenting on ATL.

take this post down.

this is my first time commenting on ATL.

take this post down.

Elie wouldn't fit through the window. So the question about how high he would bounce is moot.

this is my first time commenting on ATL.

take this post down.

I imagine most employers realize that many of the "performance related" firings right now are actually stealthy lay offs. The trick for employers is to figure out which are really performance related. But it's not as if the legal world is unaware of what's happening to people right now and why.

FYI and BTW, God gets a capital "H" in "He"

*starting new backup plan as a bookie*

over/under on how many pounds of turkey elie will eat tomorrow is 5.

taking bets now!

-nervous T-10 1L
email job leads to nervoust101l@yahoo.com

ps just kidding elie, you now how i love you

Or you can write a dumbass blog bitching about it

Seriously WTF?!
This lame advice (secure references you say?! No shit!) & a dating service huh?

Where is the chart of bonus structures we have been asking for?
What about info for any other firms who have released bonus info?
How about an investigation re: some of these stealth layoffs? Or at least a chart re: info on severance packages paid to firms who have had the balls to actually call layoffs a layoff.

SOMETHING SUBSTANTIVE THAT MATTERS!

Doesn't this site do ANY real biglaw reporting anymore?

This site used to be a weapon and had some real bite in fighting back some of the actions taken by these firms (the rescinding of summer offers pre-nalp deadline by Akin, the shafting of bonuses by Half-Skadden, the Orrick firings).

Now they are either downplayed or bumped by stories about dating services...

I want my old ATL

Ugh, what bad advice. Why tell anyone it was performance-based? You were laid off, pure and simple. Nothing you did, not performance-related, just that the economy sucks.

Marin sounds so hot.

Would any of these bogus performance reviews be actionable in tort law?

I know that courts have found a reference lying about former employee's performance to be actionable.

If you can identify a gross anomoly in a firm's performance reviews for a particular year and that coincides with a drastic downturn in that firm's economic performance - wouldn't you think that there's a strong argument that the firm is lying about the performances of those employees in an attempt to mask the firm's own failings?

It's worth a try. I think most everyone knows that a lotta the less respectable firms are trying to mask their own poor performance by tarring some associates. Why not call them on it?

And, yes, i know that some of the associates that have been fired are probably deserving.

Let's be honest though, who thinks that all of the firings that have been labeled as "performance based" actually are all performance based?

-23

Yea, sue your former employer, that will go far in getting you a job. Good luck with that.

Suck it up and start sending out resumes. Are you going to match your old salary, probably not, but you will find more interesting work and less assholes.

Look up employee at will. The lawsuit is going no where.

I agree with 20.

ATL keep getting at BigLaw and making them sweat and worry about their precious "good will" in the legal community.

That is where your power lies. Focus.

25,

Good point. Take whatever you get, and be happy with it. If the firm says that you embezzled, then just accept it. You embezzled.

Also, you can only buy your goods from the company store and you must live in the company town. Company company company company.

The answer? Resumes to another company.

26 - idiot. look up "cause of action."

you're not challenging the firing in order to get your job back, dipshit.

Nervous T !0 1L - give me a dime on the over

This advice sounds good to me, but I would phrase it differently. I would suggest tackling a bus instead of jumping out of a window.

26,

You dumb shit. Employee at will means that you can be terminated for whatever reason - that you have no entitlement to your job.

A tort lawsuit about the employer lying about your performance is another matter.

Now get back to studying for finals at your TTT.

Oh, for God's sake - just lie in your interviews. Nobody will follow up on it. Believe me.

23 -

only actionable if you can prove it's bogus AND former firm relays that information to a probable, potential employer.

tough to prove.

30: got you down!

*cries tears of joy because i just made a penny in vig...more money than i've made in months*

-nervous T-10 1L
email job leads to nervoust101l@yahoo.com

If they lay you off and tell you it's performance based, just ask them who they will be replacing you with. No doubt they're hiring a better-performing candidate to take your office as soon as you depart.

26 may be just dumb enough to blog about the legal profession

"Tommy used to work on the docs" would have been far funnier. My condolences to the letter writer.

Employee at will means you can be terminated for any reason as long as it is not based on discrimination, so the fact that they say they are firing you for performance reasons as opposed to economic reasons is irrelevant and not actionable. If you see somewhere in the post that the employer defaming the ex-employee let me know.

The point being that the lawsuit is useless. It will never work. It is not worth it. It will be thrown out of court.

In this market, why would I hire someone who has sued their former employer? Stop whining and get another job.

29 and 32, if you can be fired for any reason then there are no damages and no lawsuit.

Your friend, 26

Tell us who the firm is.

You can't sue for wrongful terminatiojn, but you can maintain a libel action if they lie about your performance. Maybe not a good career move, but the discovery could be fun.

35/ Nervous T10 1L you are no bookie a dime =$1,000 so you'd make $100 on the vig. Learn this $hit before you try to pretend to be a grown up, go study torts or something

26/41:

Good lord, you are dense. Take employment law or the LSAT, since its clear you arent a law student. There is a HUGE dif between for being fired at will and a company INTENTionally lying for the reason you were fired CAUSING DAMAGES in your ability to be hired. At worst, there are issues with proving how much the damages would be, especially in this economy, but the fact that it is wide spread and intentionally could even get you punitive damages.

An employer can fire you for any reason that doesnt violate title VII. Congrats, you can read the wall poster in the break room at mcdonalds. But they can't do it in a way that prevents you from getting a job in the future when the reason is not true.

26, 41,

Boy you are fucking thick.

You can be fired because your firm wants to pretend that you've embezzled or that you're fucking planning to overthrow the US government.

As you've so brilliantly pointed out, those statements are totally irrelevant to the firing.

They ARE relevant, you fucking fucktard, to your reputation. The firm can't run around telling people that you're an embezzler or that you're a fucking terrorist.

Now stop posting you stupid fuck and get ready to tank your next TTT final.

41, the action is slander if the now former employer is blackballing you with that bad review.

Everybody has known since Friday that the firm is Fried Frank.

39,

See 45

Is there a res ipsa loquitur issue here? I think there is.

50 - Definitely. I'd hate to be a 1L that couldn't see a res ipsa issue that clear cut.

38-- Hilarious! I love a good pun...

26/41, employment at will does not immunize the company from fraud liability when talking about your termination. If they laid you off but told the unemployment agency that you quit on your own, so that you don't get your deserved unemployment benefits, you really think there's no tort action?

Please get back to your 1L outlining.

11- Clerkships hire on set, yearly schedules unless you luck out. Today's unemployed won't see a paycheck until september if they get a clerkship.

Governments everywhere are in lockdown, both salary and hiring freezes. If you have a standard amount of student loan debt, you WILL NOT be able to pay even the extended graduated amount with your salary (700/wk after taxes). If you can even find a government agency that is hiring at all. Maybe the feds.

Tell them that you were laid off along with a number of other associates. Everyone know the economy sucks and is dubious of performance based lay offs. Don't worry about that aspect of it.

54,

Christ, spare us all the doomsday talk. The economy is gonna be bad for a coupla years. You don't have to be French about it.

Pretend, just for a second that you're a goddamned American.

Elie,

You are an idiot and you obviously know nothing about poker if you think someone can become a professional poker player overnight by reading a book. I would love to meet you in A.C. so that I can clean your clock.

Sincerely,
A Young Lady

ADVICE:
Do not use a headhunter. They charge firms 25% or more of your annual salary for your placement, but because there are so many laid off associates looking for work, firms have their pick of qualified associates without needing to pay headhunting fees.

As noted earlier, I was a bit puzzled why the headline didn't read "docs" instead of "docks".

45/46 are 100% correct. It's not the at-will firing. That's a completely separate issue. It's the reputation damage that stems from the firm portraying your termination as performance-based, when - in fact - it was based on economic conditions/firm finances/etc.

I have seen this phrased by courts as damage to an individual's good name and reputation; exposing the employee to ridicule and humiliation; and severe mental anguish.

So in terms of damages, it may be that some courts are willing to conceive of the damage as occurring immediately upon your layoff for false pretenses. At that moment, your reputation has been harmed. So it's really a matter of proving that the layoffs were not performance based.

That shit is amenable to class treatment.

57,

See also 56 ("The economy is gonna be bad for a coupla years. You don't have to be French about it.")

Grow a pair. The sky is not falling.

This point is largely moot. Any decent law firm is going to have a policy against doing anything more than confirming your dates of employment. The functionaries who work in HR won't say whether you were fired for inappropriately posting on blogs, stealing office supplies, banging the managing partner's daughter or screwing up a filing, regardless of what your performance reviews say. The lawyers in the firm, on the other hand, rarely know (or care) about these rules and if a law school classmate from across town calls when your resume lands on their desk, will tell their buddies they think you're an idiot if they think you're an idiot. Since these conversations occur off the record, what's in your performance review won't matter.

55 - Your solution doesn't work. Law firms are the same as other businesses. They don't layoff attorneys at random. They cull the weakest from the herd first. While there's always people who manage to work their way back into big law, it's usually through massaging the truth. Why would another BigLaw shop want to hire another firm's washout? It's the same as what happens with all of the prestige whores at V10 NY firms. By the time the firm tells them they're not among the small percentage of associates who have a shot at making partner it's already too late. No BigLaw shop wants to make a person a partner if that person wasn't good enough to make partner at their old firm.

All of the associates at my firm have been waiting for the coverage of the stealth layoffs. Still, any chance we're going to get you to name a few names or ballpark some numbers? The firms need to know that we're perfectly aware what's going on and it's not going to stay quiet.

61,

I think that paradigm might have be more generally applicable during other downturns. The current economic downturn appears to be a complete anomoly, though. I'd find it hard to believe that when entire structured finance departments get axed, that other big law firms will forever be disinclined to hire those folks.

I also think you give far too much credit to how discerning BigLaw is in its hiring. Once the economy heats up again, BigLaw will go right back to throwing warm bodies at whatever practice group is making it rain.

If you've just been fired from your firm's IP group, be concerned. If you were part of a RE or SF group that got hammered, I think there'll be plenty of work for you in a year or two.

One thing I would do is to try to keep busy by temping as a contract lawyer. It's not ideal but you have to make money. You might want to consider applying for a government attorney position where agencies are not as skittish about hiring someone who's been laid off.
Also, as for interviews, I would say that you left the firm at a time when the law firm appeared to be downsizing and leave it at that. If you're applying for a government position, you don't want to lie about why you had to leave.

Fired and Scared, believe it or not, this recently happened to me. I was working overnight on a Monday an "emergency assignment" for a partner who only wanted me to work on it and on Tuesday I had my review, was told my reviews were "overwhelming negative" (no specifics of course) and that I should pack my bags. Luckily I had a few partners who were furious and went to bat for me (to no avail) but one was able to get me an interview at another semi-great firm (I guess lower Teir One) which worked out great. I know it sucks right now and you're freaking out, but remember that they suck, not you. Find a partner who will be willing to make a few phone calls for you. All you need is to get lucky once. Hang in there. Chin up.

25,

It's "fewer assholes," not "less assholes."

61,

I wonder how you would define "weakest of the herd". It seems you are talking about performance, and defining that as only billables (and for senior associates, book of business, to the extent they have one). But there are many other factors that might define the weakest of the herd, many of which are beyond an associate's control. For example, if you work for a junior partner who doesn't have a large book himself and mostly services the firm's big clients, you more likely to be let go over an associate who works for the chief rainmaking partner, regardless of anything else.

Of course, this example is dependent on the way work is assigned in a firm, the year of the associate, whether they had the opportunity to change partners, etc. But that goes to my point: lots of factors beyond associate performance. And as 63 noted, that doesn't even deal with associates who work in any sort of finance capacity, in which case, you are screwed.

Thanks for the explanation about hypothetical lawsuits with made up facts,. That will do the original poster a lot of good. You would tell this person to file suit? You think there is some chance of it working out for him? Good luck with that.

First off, you don't need to say you were let go due to performance. Unless you did something illegal that caused your firing, all an HR person is going to do is confirm dates of employment and salary. You provide the potential new employer with references from your old firm, hopefully those that you've spoken to that understand your predicament and will say good things about you.

If your layoff was "performance based" no one at the old firm is really going to say so. Again, you are the one that choses which references you will give a prospective employer.

Certainly there are no grounds for a lawsuit at this early stage, you would have a hard time proving that just because you were told your 'lay-off' was performance based, that was the case, or that you have damages. Can't prove damages until you've tried and failed to get a job because of the perception that you got fired for performance reasons. you can't really file a lawsuit before then, since certainly no lawfirm in their right mind is going to hire an attorney that is suing their former firm for a non-discriminatory reason. That's a sure way to kill your legal career.

Even if somehow a prospective employer gets a bad review from someone, how are you going to know? i've yet to ever hear a prospective employer, especially an attorney, admit that a job applicant got a bad review from another attorney. Afterall, they know that could be grounds for a lawsuit and attorneys do generally have each other's back. 99% of the time, if a prospective employer doesn't hire you, you just get a letter saying, ' thanks but we hired someone else more suitable.'

So the best advice is to relax a bit, enjoy the holidays, hopefully with a severence package, apply for unemployment (and enjoy the extension of benefits), update your resume, contact your network and start applying for another job. Maybe take some temp work in the meantime. Oh, and you might contact your student loan company for a deferment.

63 - That might be true, though it's really a question of degree and I don't think we'll ever move to a point where one would characterize it as easy to move from something other than law school or another BigLaw shop to BigLaw. When we hit our last large recession in '91 a lot of BigLaw shops axed entire classes of (generally younger) associates. When things picked up again a couple years later, there weren't enough mid-senior levels to do the work. While the firms could hire the people axed by other shops, those people generally don't have the needed skills. If your archetypal structured finance attorney hasn't done a structured finance deal in 2 years, they're not going to be much more useful than a kid coming off a clerkship.

67 - I wouldn't propose to define it (and if pressed, certainly wouldn't define it only as billables - nor would any firm I know of). Suffice it to say that any firm (or other organization) has ways of determining which associates are the most expendable. The fact that those metrics may not be "fair" or always result in the least competent attorneys getting the ax doesn't mean the firm hasn't gone through that process.

- 61

Part of your advice should have been that they send you the details and name of the firm so that it can be publicly shamed. Moreover, ATL should be keeping a prominently placed list about firms that have been credibly demonstrated to be conducting stealth layoffs. An important benefit of having a public source of information about firms is to reward firms that act responsibly and punish those that don't. In the next recruiting cycle, it should be made clear which firms have demonstrated willingness to sacrifice associate careers to avoid taking a reputational hit.

Given that many lawyers are being laid off right now, it's a little a) insensitive and b) asinine to post a 'joke' column on what to do if you are laid off.

ATL: -1

You will never post this firm's name because the associates we shitcan will never admit to it. Even if you were to post our name, we would still be turning down over-qualified students everytime we recruit. You need us more than we need you right now, and that is going to go on for sometime to come. What are you going to do? Unionize? HaHaHa.

Dear Fired and Scared:

You were fired because of your performance. Sure the firm laid off you and others, but if were a good (or at least a better) performer then you would not be laid off.

Take some personal responsibility and realize that if you were a better laywer than most of your peers at the firm, then more than likely not have been laid off.

Hope this helps and happy holidays!

Sincerely,

Managing Partner

Here's my suggestion: Get admitted to the Bankruptcy bar and start doing bankruptcies. There's plenty of work there. Make sure you get paid up front.

Dear Managing Partner,
He was probably fired because he didn't suck up as well as the other associates. In this market cuts have to be made and a partner's personal feelings usualy outway the obvious choices (i.e. good associates get fired, dumb sycophants keep their jobs). Fired and Scared will rebound and succeed. Just watch and see.
Love,
#65

Dear 65-76:

If your premise is true, then he did not play the game correctly and was fired as a result. Life lesson learned.

By the tone of your comment, you sound like you might learn the lesson too.

Regards,

Managing Partner

Dear Managing Partner,
I think you meant "65/76" since "65-76" implies the commenter had written all 12 posts. Of course, since you are a Managing Partner (yeah right) I'm sure these mistakes are few and far between. Just thought I'd point it out.
-4th year SF lawyer who still has his job

adding onto 64 -

You may find that big law firms will be hesitant to interview or hire those who were subject to "stealth" layoffs. Unfortunately, your marketability tends to decline when you leave big law without a job - especially when you're out of work for an extended period of time. In those situations, applying to smaller firms and government agencies are the alternatives.

To add to 64 & 79 - Look into Staff Attorney jobs too. It may be depressing, but you'll stay in a big firm enviroment and make $100K with 9 to 5 hours. When the market picks up you can leave.

Managing Partner is certainly a poor writer. If he is indeed who he claims to be, it is a poor reflection on his firm that he should hold his position. Perhaps he ought to be the one leaving.

Managing Partner is certainly a poor writer. If he is indeed who he claims to be, it is a sad reflection on his firm that he should hold his position. Perhaps he ought to be the one leaving.

Managing Partner is certainly a poor writer. If he is indeed who he claims to be, it is a sad reflection on his firm that he should hold his position. Perhaps he ought to be the one leaving.

OMG encouraging someone who just lost his job and is asking for serious advice is the height of irresponsibility and has to be a new low for ATL. Hopefully this is rock bottom and Lat will finally step in and save this sinking ship. Somehow I doubt it. Happy Thanksgiving Moron. I hope there is no blood on your hands.

OMG encouraging someone who just lost his job and is asking for serious advice to commit suicide is the height of irresponsibility and has to be a new low for ATL. Hopefully this is rock bottom and Lat will finally step in and save this sinking ship. Somehow I doubt it. Happy Thanksgiving Moron. I hope there is no blood on your hands.

OMG encouraging someone who just lost his job and is asking for serious advice to commit suicide is the height of irresponsibility and has to be a new low for ATL. Hopefully this is rock bottom and Lat will finally step in and save this sinking ship. Somehow I doubt it. Happy Thanksgiving Moron. I hope there is no blood on your hands.

81-83:

Your wife does not think I am a poor writer when I'm tapping that ass!

Regards,

Managing Partner

84 - 86: If you post the same stupiid comment one more time I WILL be the one committing suicide.

You have to love all of the "stealth layoff" bullshit.

The fact is that if you are a good performer (earner) and you are not socially retarded, then you will not be laid off. If you are neither, then you better dust off your resume.

Well, at least Managing Partner has talent as a gigolo, if no other skills. Perhaps he is the highest priced whore in the world.

Doing one's job twenty-four hours a day means nothing to garbage like Managing Partner, who is clearly obsessed with profits for himself and sex to the exclusion of any semblance of humanity.

The breakfast toast floats to the top at law firms.

SOmeone said potential employers won't flat out ask you if you were fired. This is not always true. It depends on what type of employer. SOME law firms will ask. Just tell them and have the references. Most in-house gigs will not ask. Most of us in-house lawyers were asked to leave or read the writing on the wall, etc at a firm. I can't be sure, but I'd be very surprised if an in house employer asked about the nature of your departure. You may be asked something like "Are you still on good terms with the people there?" or something to see if a scandal was involved. Unless there was a big scandal, you can almost always answer that question with a yes.

One other bit of advice to people who were stealth or otherwise laidoff: come to terms with what happened before you try to move on. Maybe it truly was unfair. If so, just brush it off and move on. Don't be resentful. But maybe you weren't the best performer. If this is true, so what? Maybe you weren't showing your best because you were unhappy in the environment. If so, think about other types of work besides big firm. (I recommend in-house.) The point is, think through what truly happened (not what you want to think happened) and accept it before you try to move on. If you have resentments, you'll give off bad vibes in interviews. If you're at peace with it, people will respond positively to you. Hang in there.

92: Way too touchy feely.

Here is better advice: Sulk for a while and then suck it up, get over it and get another job. Next time work harder and forge relationships with the higher ups so that it does not happen again or at least have enough cash to last you 3 years unemployment.

Maybe if the economy wouldn't have collapsed the fifty of us at one firm would not have been axed. Moving on is one thing, but for the people who were lucky enough not to have been fired (yet) to suggest it was our fault is both stupid and insulting.

We look forward to a successful future, but save the crap about our deserving the implosion we were caught up in.

My firm represented an engineer in Houston in a claim against her ex-employer. She contended they were lying about her performance to hide the fact that business was slow. Naturally, having worked there 4 years, she knew who was sleeping with whom, etc. We settled for 50 grand, which was not far off from her lost income plus the future reputational cost, in economic terms only. The settlement came at a mediation- prior to filing suit. We thought it was about what a jury might do. They agreed in the future to give only her dates of employment, and to say she was a good engineer. I understand she's done well since leaving, it worked out for everyone.

So yeah, dudes above me, there is a way to successfully bring such an action. A New York lawyer's salary makes such cases more attractive than a Houston engineer's. So maybe I'll take the bar up there and you kids can call me when your world gets crushed . . .

For girls, the credited response is hooking.

Yeesh! At least, when my firm laid me off, they were honest about why and gave me an excellent reference (which was no small help in landing a new position).

Firms that pull this shit are the absolute dregs of the profession. What goes around...

92 here. 93, you are douche. Your advice is simply to strive for the results everyone in this situation would obviously want ("get over it and get another job"). You say nothing about how they're supposed to make that happen and then flame me for telling them to deal with the psychological aspects of the situation first.

I don't think I was too touchy feely. This would be a hard blow to almost anyone. My point was that these folks need to calmly try to understand what happened and then accept it. When I was in a big firm, we hired people who'd left other big firms under undisclosed circumstances. It all came down to how they handled it in the interview. That's all I'm saying.
Look, some employers will hold this against you and there's almost nothing you can say. Those will be unpleasant interviews. Some employers won't even ask about it. Others will "ask around it" and judge what happened based on how you respond.
If you have acting chops, ignore my advice at 92. For everyone else who can't fake it, come to terms with what happened before you hit the interview circuit. If you are tense, angry or defensive about the topic, you'll hurt your chances with some potential emplyers.

there is always public defender jobs. They pay upwards of 50-60k in big city (after 2-3 years of experience), you seldom work more than 35 hours a week (a real 8 hour day), and you get to represent the scum of the earth, so you always realize how much better off than most people.

Oh, and you'll never run out of work :P

But seriously, in the end, if you went to a descent law school, didnt actually break any laws or ethics rules, and worked at a descent firm, you can get a new job, it will just be a big cut in pay. However, it will likely be a huge increase in free time. And if you werent living on the edge, its an adjustment. And as long as you end up doing something interesting, you can get back into big law when the economy picks up. If you even want. A family member of mine ended up doing gov't work and just couldnt handle the thought of working more the 40 a week. Even if it meant doublign their pay.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It happened to me too. 12 months of hard work, with nary a negative word, and then suddenly, on evaluation day, I was told I sucked, always sucked, and pack yr bags. Some partners who I worked with a lot and who always told me to my face that they liked my work, mysteriously did not provide evaluations, while another b*tch that I worked with once, and who smiled in my face the whole time, wrote an amazingly lenghty evaluation, almost all of it bad. I will go to my grave believing that this was something that was decided on late in the game and justified retroactively with trumped up BS. If I was laid off with a bunch of others, my reputation intact, I would be in much better shape than I am now.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

On the topic at hand, this is happening at ALL firms. And if you think that you are above getting laid off in this fashion, you are deluding yourself.

101 - This has happened to a lot of people.

USE THESE MESSAGE BOARDS TO EXPOSE THESE FIRMS.

Managing Partner = Steve O'Neal?

It sucks to be laid off or stealth fired or whatever, but everyone who is let go must take a good hard look at his or her self and realize their faults and what they can be doing better at the next job.

The fact is that a firm will not lay off its best lawyers. If a firm is laying off 10% of its attorneys, chances are those 10% are not as good as the other 90% keeping their jobs. Or at the very least, the good lawyers in that 10% either weren't good enough or they did not let their partners/supervising attorneys know how good they were and how hard they worked. Either way, there is some personal responsibility of being laid off.

A lot of firms and companies are using this economic down-time to "trim the fat" and get rid of underperforming employees, so my advice to everyone is work hard, do a good job, and make sure your boss knows it.

Re: US government work.

US Attorney's Offices get 500-1000 resumes for each available AUSA position in the best economic times. Do not assume that now, when the streets are full of V10 refugees, it will be easy to get a government job with the Feds.

I was let go from a firm in 2000, inexplicably and under the strangest of circumstances. I was just wrapping up my first year, had met my hours, and though I occasionally felt that I didn't fit into the group, I was (I thought) well liked. But my discomfort led me to start looking for government jobs feverishly, thinking that BigLaw was not for me. As I was looking into clerkships, AUSA gigs, etc., I was let go.

The layoff really shook me. I'd gone to a great college, 'top' law school, and the way it was done really shook my self-confidence, which is what you should absolutely NOT let happen to you. I was called into the managing partner's office (not for reviews) on a Monday and told that I should be gone by the end of the week. That's right, they only gave me 4 days to get affairs in order. It was traumatizing.

Don't let that happen to you. Demand that you stay on for at least a few weeks while you find another job. If they balk at that, get references as Marin suggests -- a lot of them. Call a recruiter you know, or one a friend has worked with, and get to work. Hopefully your resume will already be in order.

After I was laid off, I had no problem racking up interviews - but each one ended the same way: people asking why I didn't switch firms before leaving my old one. I came clean with the reason, and each time, I got told "thanks, but no thanks." Perhaps in this market that sort of candor will win you favor, but I don't know. If you can glide over the fact of the layoff at all, do so. It's kind of like meeting girls: it's much easier to meet girls if you're already in a relationship. Similarly, it's much easier to get a job when you have one.

I eventually got two cold-ish offers. One was from what we would all agree is a TTT, and they extended an offer on the condition that I accept a probationary contingency-type payment arrangement and no salary for the first year (an offer that I openly scoffed at); the second, unfortunately for me, didn't come until after I had spent 8 months unemployed and collecting unemployment benefits. I never thought I'd be on welfare, but there I was, looking forward to that $500 monthly check. It helped me keep my shit together, maintain some semblance of an 'active' life, and allowed me to stretch my savings just enough to not have to move out (I had always lived well below my means, so my rent was low - good thing). My second offer came from a firm often talked about here, but it also came with some conditions. No matter, I happily accepted that offer, and have been at the firm since. I've exceeded my hours each year, maintained a social life, developed a specialty, made some great friends, and I'll be up for partnership in a year.

I'm genuinely happy, but I'll never, ever forget the depths of my misery during those months I was unemployed. Don't let the fact that you're laid off shake your confidence. It sucks, but it happens. Be aggressive, work out, use the surfeit of free time to your advantage any way you can. People get laid off, terminated, "fired" for tons of reasons -- be strong and you'll be fine. Even the stupidest monkeys can do 95% of what we do, so unless you did something egregious, or are truly incompetent, keep in mind that a layoff simply means "we would rather have your salary on the left side of our balance sheet than you in our office." And that's it.

105 -- Word hard, do a good job, and make sure your boss knows it? WOW, I'm sure all the people who got "stealthed" never thought of THAT! But hey, just keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel secure and safe.

89 - I hope someday you get what's coming to you. I know a guy (HLS grad) who used to smirk at all the stealth lay-offs at his firm and blame them on the poor people who were laid off. Then, one day, he got laid off, despite his high and might degree from HLS. Guess he thought it couldn't happen to him so may as well smirk at those it did happen to. He was wrong.

89 - I hope someday you get what's coming to you. I know a guy (HLS grad) who used to smirk at all the stealth lay-offs at his firm and blame them on the poor people who were laid off. Then, one day, he got laid off, despite his high and mighty degree from HLS. Guess he thought it couldn't happen to him so may as well smirk at those it did happen to. He was wrong.

89 - I hope someday you get what's coming to you. I know a guy (HLS grad) who used to smirk at all the stealth lay-offs at his firm and blame them on the poor people who were laid off. Then, one day, he got laid off, despite his high and mighty degree from HLS. Guess he thought it couldn't happen to him so may as well smirk at those it did happen to. He was wrong.

I got a very positive review as a first year and a terrible review just monhs later. It was awful. I started looking for a job right away and left ASAP for the first decent job that came along as I felt the writing was on the wall. I wasn't asked to leave, but I think that's only because the firm was so disorganized at the time that they didn't get around to it. I was so mortified - my last months at the firm were hell in that I felt everybody knew what had happened.

The firm? Heller Ehrman. There are people in my class who still don't have jobs. Sometimes a bad review is the best thing that ever happened to you.