Law Shucks, Layoffs

This Week In Layoffs: 07.11.09

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[Ed. note: Above the Law has teamed up with Law Shucks. Law Shucks has done excellent work translating all of the layoff news into user-friendly charts and graphs: the Layoff Tracker.]

Where did that come from? The big news for the week is obviously DLA Piper blasting us back to mid-March form, with the biggest layoff since, actually, completion of its own UK redundancy consultation in May.

More on that later. But first, we’ll take our traditional quick look at the broader economic activity.

The numbers were actually surprisingly good this week, with initial jobless claims down to the lowest levels since January. In fact, the numbers are probably significantly worse than that indicates; early plant closing masks some serious seasonal adjustments that are skewing the numbers. And, of course, overall unemployment was up again, to 1983 levels, as new jobs just aren’t being created yet.

In fact, overall unemployment is getting to record levels. According to Calculated Risk, “the current recession is now the 2nd worst recession since WWII in percentage terms – and also in terms of the unemployment rate (only early ’80s recession was worse).”

As we learned from DLA Piper, layoffs at law firms are still on the table. Details after the jump.

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DLA Piper is obviously going gangbusters in this latest round of cost cutting. The firm just laid off 21 lawyers and 100 staff, is reportedly volunteering people who weren’t otherwise planning to participate for deferral until 2011, and announced that it’s “revamping” the associate track.

Even Cadwalader, which kicked things a year and a half ago and was just recently praised for its transparency, laid people off again this week – although there’s some semantic trickeration going on. Thirty-four associates are being forced into sabbaticals with no assurance of re-employment when the year is up. Frankly, we view this as a blatant result, but logical extension of, the Mayer Brown “secondment” program, about which we have a very low opinion (which opinion is not particularly popular, either).

Cadwalader wasn’t the only white-shoe firm to lay people off. Cahill Gordon has also laid off an undisclosed number of junior associates (we still need a number before we can put it in the tracker, though).

The APAC region was also particularly hard hit. International behemoth Baker & McKenzie is cutting 11% of its lawyers and staff in China (HT: ABA Journal) and Australia’s Allens Arthur Robinson is cutting 114 people through a voluntary redundancy program. It was a big week for the firm we rarely hear from – they also came in a surprising #10 on the Bloomberg M&A rankings and #4 on the Reuters league table (largely due to antitrust work on the Pfizer/Wyeth deal).

Couple that with layoffs at Hogan & Hartson and Eckert Seamans, and this week was the worst since early May.

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The final numbers, plus charts and analysis of other cost-cutting measures, in the full article at Law Shucks.

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