Happy New Year from Above the Law!

Happy New Year, dear readers! Welcome to 2010. May the new year bring you peace, prosperity, a new Aeron chair, and all sorts of other good things.
We looked back at our 2009 “Happy New Year” post. It featured a reader poll: “Will 2009 be a better year for the legal profession than 2008?”
A narrow majority — 50.6 percent, to be exact — predicted that 2009 would be worse. Congratulations, guys; it seems you were right, at least with respect to Biglaw. According to the Layoff Tracker over at Lawshucks, over 14,000 people have been laid off by major law firms since January 1, 2008. Of those 14,000 folks, over 12,000 were laid off in calendar year 2009.
Of course, layoffs aren’t the only way to measure health. Maybe firms laid off personnel to improve their bottom lines? But we predict that when the American Lawyer releases its data on profits per partner in 2009, they will show big declines from 2008.
But hey, they say that green shoots are popping up all over the place. Take our reader poll about whether 2010 will be better than 2009, plus share your new year resolutions with us, after the jump.


The poll appears below. We’re also interested in hearing your resolutions for 2010 — feel free to share them in the comments.
Once again, Happy New Year!
P.S. A quick administrative announcement about today: because it is New Year’s Day, we will not be publishing (unless some huge news breaks).

Earlier: Happy New Year from ATL!

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