Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Notes from the Breadline,” a column by a laid-off lawyer in New York. Prior columns are collected here. You can reach Roxana St. Thomas by email (at roxanastthomas@gmail.com), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.
At the Big Law Firm where we used to work, my friend Giovanna was the kind of associate that every partner dreams of. She spent nights and weekends at the office. She took on the most tedious tasks without complaining. She did the work of three people. She was conscientious. Sometimes, the partner for whom she worked would call her late at night, at home, with a frantic last-minute request for something that probably could have been done earlier in the day; Giovanna would turn around and go back to work to get it done.
Giovanna survived working for this partner for four years, but she did not survive the round of layoffs that eventually trimmed the herd at the Big Law Firm. In the months before she was “let go,” she had been certain that the figurative guillotine was poised above her waiting head. So, when she was summoned to the managing partner’s office to hear her fate, she said later, she was shocked, but not particularly surprised. She cried when she got the news, but then she gave them a piece of her mind and cleaned out her desk. A few days later, she left without looking back.
For the first few weeks, Giovanna and commiserated about life in the breadline. “I’ll never find a job!” she wailed, and threatened to cash in her 401(k). “Don’t do it,” I told her repeatedly, picturing her out on a ledge, cell phone in hand, ready to take a financially unwise leap.
“This is infuriating,” she said at one point. “No matter how many times I explain that more than 6000 people were laid off from firms, I swear people still look at me and think, ‘You suck, and that’s why you were let go.’ But AT&T lays off 50 people and it makes the CNN scroll and everyone empathizes.” I complained that Cliff didn’t understand that lawyers had emerged as the lepers of the new job market. She complained that her boyfriend, Tony, kept telling her to get a job at the local diner.
But Giovanna is one of the lucky ones. After a few weeks of unemployment, which we spend planning our eventual relocation to the shantytown which, she insists, is bound to spring up in Central Park, a former colleague passes her resume along to a friend of a friend and … before we know it, she has a new job.
Read about Giovanna’s new gig, after the jump.

Continue reading “Notes from the Breadline: Fear of Falling”