Over the summer, we wondered: what can law firms do to prepare for a possible double-dip recession?
One obvious answer: firms can “right-size” themselves, by making sure that they are as lean and as mean as they can be. And this seems to be what has been happening over the past few months.
We haven’t seen much in terms of lawyer layoffs lately, but staff layoffs are another story. In fact, on the staff side, we seem to be looking at a trend of firms reducing their permanent staff positions in favor of outsourcing.
Since August, we’ve learned of staff layoffs at O’Melveny & Myers (75 positions) and Paul Hastings (45 positions) — both as a result of domestic outsourcing to outside service providers. In addition, Pillsbury Winthrop announced that it might have to cut staffers who aren’t willing to relocate to its new Professional Services Center in Nashville. This prompted us to ask: Is On-Shore Outsourcing the Biglaw Wave of the Future?
The answer seems to be yes. Today we bring you news of additional staff reductions, at Fulbright & Jaworski and Goodwin Procter, both involving outsourcing….
Continue reading “The Growing Trend of Staff Layoffs: Fulbright and Goodwin Announce Cuts”
Hot on the heels of support staff layoffs and on-shore outsourcing efforts at O’Melveny & Myers, we have news of another law firm doing the exact same thing. Except this law firm has figured out a way to do it with half the tears and way less relocation angst.
On-shore outsourcing might be better for the American economy than sending the jobs overseas, and Pillsbury Winthrop has figured out a way to do it that doesn’t involve shipping people to the third world country known as “West Virginia.”
Pillsbury is moving staff operations farther south, and the firm is bringing some of its executives with it, too….
Continue reading “Is On-Shore Outsourcing the Biglaw Wave of the Future?”
The big news this morning is bad news for the staff at O’Melveny & Myers. News started leaking out last night that the firm would be laying off 75 support staff members.
The firm has confirmed the news that was first published in The Recorder.
Approximately half the of the laid-off O’Melveny staffers will be cut outright. The other half will have the opportunity to be relocated to scenic West Virginia….
Continue reading “Staff Layoff Watch: O’Melveny & Myers Replaces 75 Humans With Technology”
Oh happy Indian man, you know this globalization trend works both ways, don't you?
Protectionism is a song as old as time. We do it, and other countries do it to us. Every country is trying to figure our how to maximize the benefits of globalization without making their own people join a frenzied “dey tuk er jerbbbs” mob.
And that’s fine. This economic competition is good for standards of living all across the world — unless, of course, it leads to nuclear war.
But sometimes the lack of global reciprocity can become maddening. Take the outsourcing of legal work. For years we’ve been talking about how entry level, “document monkey” jobs are going from junior Biglaw attorneys to cheaper workers in India and a few other countries. Ever since the American Bar Association changed its rules in 2008 and allowed American legal work to be done offshore, competition from India over low-end legal work has been a key factor for those who care about the future of Biglaw.
And yet India remains a closed legal market to U.S. and British firms. Western firms are not allowed to do legal work in India, even though Western firms and clients are free to send work to India at the cost of American jobs.
Does this mean whoever keeps an eye on the Indian legal economy is doing a far, far better job than our own American Bar Association? Sure. But it’s hardly breaking news that the ABA is ineffective.
What’s far more newsworthy is that this fundamental inequity between the two legal markets might be changing — not because the ABA is magically getting its act together, but because Indian authorities might be willing to stop being a$$holes….
Continue reading “India Considers Becoming A Little Less Racist Protectionist”
While at the Legal Technology Leadership Summit, I attended the panel entitled “Legal Process Outsourcing and Insourcing.” As I mentioned on Twitter, when I go to conferences I enjoy attending the panels that are most likely to cause pain and suffering among junior attorneys. It’s kind of my thing.
Usually, anything involving outsourcing is a good bet to make junior attorneys scream expletives at God before drinking themselves into a stupor. But this panel was surprisingly positive about the future of Biglaw attorneys in a outsourced world — and not just the career associate types. The panelists saw a future for regular partner-track associates with dreams of a better tomorrow.
Of course, even under the rosiest of scenarios, Biglaw firms will lose money as more companies outsource, but corporate GCs don’t so much care about that….
Continue reading “Legal Technology Leadership Summit: Outsourcing And How It Maybe Won’t Totally Ruin Your Life”
The information age we live in can be a blessing and a curse. Few fields demonstrate this truth more persuasively than the realm of electronic discovery.
During a panel here at the Legal Technology Leadership Summit on the theft and exfiltration of intellectual property, the panelists discussed the exponential growth in information densities, the increasing importance of IP, and the challenge that evolving technology presents to the governing legal frameworks. As one panelist noted: “Technology leaps, the law creeps.”
What does rapidly changing technology mean for the e-discovery world? And what are some considerations that in-house lawyers should keep in mind when responding to e-discovery requests?
Continue reading “Dispatch from Amelia Island: In-House Strategies for Litigation Response”
During 2011, Paul Hastings has been picking up partners. We previously mentioned their acquiring two prominent leveraged finance lawyers, Michael Michetti and Rich Farley, from Cahill Gordon. Additional hires, including Michael Baker from Shearman & Sterling and Steven Park from Finnegan Henderson, are listed on the PH website.
Like any large firm, however, Paul Hastings loses partners too. We’ve just learned of two partners who are ankling PH for Nixon Peabody.
Let’s find out who they are, get the backstory on their departures, and also obtain the 411 on some PH staff layoffs….
Continue reading “Two Partners Leave Paul Hastings for Nixon Peabody
(Plus Paul Hastings staff layoffs.)“
Okay, I’m using the term “lifts” very loosely. We all know that outsourcing is taking work that used to be done by very expensive associates based in America and giving to inexpensive workers based in India. The law firm saves money, the client saves money, and the only people who are harmed are recent graduates of U.S. law schools.
But could outsourcing companies be poised to give something back to American law school graduates? Outsourcing companies aren’t ever going to replace the many lost Biglaw jobs that are never coming back, but they could be giving rise to some new opportunities.
At this point, every little bit helps…
Continue reading “Outsourcing: The Rising Tide That Lifts All Boats?”
I should have written about this days ago, but the pain was still too near to me. The humans have lost to the machines. We might as well start digging towards the Earth’s core, where it’s still warm, and start building our own Zion.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the terrifying story of “Watson.” It’s a computer built by IBM that just kicked Ken Jennings’s ass on Jeopardy. If you are not particularly scientifically inclined, I can see how that might not sound like a big deal. You probably remember Deep Blue beating chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov and think that this kind of thing has been happening for a while.
That’s just what the machines want you to think. Teaching a computer to understand the subtle nuances of trivia — the puns, the innuendos, the ordering of information — is frightening. It’s a lot different than writing an algorithm that allows a machine to work through all possible chess moves and pick the correct one.
It makes you wonder: “What else could a computer be taught to do?” Over at the WSJ Law Blog, Ashby Jones wonders if the answer might be, “Your job”….
Continue reading “I, For One, DO NOT Welcome Our New Computer Overlords”
I know lots of guys fantasize about boinking “barely legal” teenage girls. Not me, I like women: fully formed, adult women. There’s just something unseemly about older men salivating over girls who could have been in high school a year ago. Call me crazy, but it’s just more interesting as an adult to be intimate with other adults.
Similarly, I like my lawyers to actually practice law. There’s something unseemly about watching market forces turn law school graduates into glorified paralegals and secretaries. Call me a prude, but there’s just something gross about seeing young, nubile attorneys going around begging for document review positions. These people spent three years of their lives and six figures of their (or someone else’s) money to get law degrees; they should have something to show for their efforts.
But even if I don’t like to look, I can’t deny that this is happening. We are all living in a time that will be studied by future generations: a time when attorney career paths bifurcated, between traditional partnership-track associates and what I’ll call “barely legal” career paths….
Continue reading “Law Graduates: Welcome to Your ‘Barely Legal’ Future”
This week, The Rundown is going international. LegalTech is just around the corner, and there will be a solid contingent of lawyers from the United Kingdom in attendance.
Speaking of LegalTech, I’m going to be covering the conference for Above the Law. If you are interested in communicating with someone from ATL about LegalTech coverage, please contact me at gabe@abovethelaw.com. Thanks.
In this week’s Rundown, we will touch on the LegalTech conference. We’ll also link to a quick interview with the General Counsel of the UK’s Serious Fraud Office, who recently discussed the UK Bribery act and its connection to e-discovery.
Staying in foreign territory, why has there been a recent boom in cases requiring foreign languages? I also highlight two articles of interest on outsourcing…
Continue reading “The Rundown: This Week in Legal Technology – 01.14.11
(And a note about ATL’s LegalTech coverage.)“
Legal outsourcing makes her happy.
* Demand for attorneys well-versed in animal law is on the rise as pet owners push for recognition of their pets as family members rather than ordinary property. Which reminds me of my dog Rascal. He ate his own crap, licked furniture, and once peed on a baby. And when he died, my parents looked at me and said, “It should have been you.” [Baltimore Sun]
* Yesterday in the life of Mikhail Khodorkovsky has American diplomats crying about a traveshamockery. [Bloomberg]
* Joe Miller may allow Lisa Murkowski to be certified as the winner of Alaska’s contested U.S. Senate seat, but Miller isn’t done scrapping and a’clawing. Shine on you crazy diamond. Shine on. [Washington Post]
* 200 massholes in the Massachusetts Legislature and only 52 of them are attorneys. [Boston Globe]
* Sotomayor, so hot right now. Sotomayor. [New York Times]
* Another article about legal outsourcing. Better bone up on your trivia, slumdogs. Ouch. That one barely makes sense. [Chicago Tribune]
* The Brits have beefed up their laws against companies bribing foreign officials. Reached for comment, Mr. Bean made a stupid face. [Wall Street Journal]
Protectionism? You betcha!
Bowing to pressure from arguably every unemployed or underemployed American-trained attorney, the American Bar Association has delayed its controversial decision about whether or not to start accrediting foreign law schools. Back in August, we told you that the ABA was thinking about unleashing foreign-educated attorneys upon bar examinations across the country. And apparently on this one rare occasion the ABA chose against flooding the market with even more attorneys when there are not enough jobs to go around.
Should attorneys be openly happy about this blatant protectionism? I don’t know — have you tried to get a job in this market?
The only thing global competition is going to do is push down legal salaries, while having zero effect on the cost of legal education….
Continue reading “ABA Delays Decision on Whether to Accredit Foreign Law Schools”
Hang onto your hats, your legal world is about to get rocked. At least behind the scenes.
Thomson Reuters, owner of West Publishing and BAR/BRI is selling BAR/BRI. The reports have been confirmed by people who are enrolled in BAR/BRI. They all received an email from the company tonight.
Above the Law obtained a copy of this stunning email containing the news….
Continue reading “Thomson Reuters Exploring Sale of BAR/BRI, Will Acquire Pangea3″
Lawyers complain but Obama won't listen.
If you’ve been following along with the trend towards outsourcing over the past few years, you know what American lawyers are up against. Indian lawyers can do American legal work… while American attorneys are shut out of India’s (large and growing) legal market.
As many of you know, President Obama recently fled traveled to India, and ABA president Stephen N. Zack is begging Obama to use his international goodwill to convince India to stop acting like dicks in an exclusionary fashion with respect to American lawyers and law firms.
Zack’s arguments are simple ones, based on sound business practices, free trade, and fundamental fairness. Yet these arguments haven’t worked on Indian legal authorities, and apparently Obama isn’t any more receptive…
Continue reading “ABA Asks Obama To Make India Play Fair”
Outsourcing; you might have heard of it. It’s the trend whereby law firms send high man hours/low brain effort work overseas to workers who can complete the tasks at a fraction of the cost. Clients love it, consultants are pushing it, and law firms are struggling to add this new efficiency opportunity into their overall business model.
Well, not all law firms. Peter Kalis, managing partner of K&L Gates, gave a quote to the Legal Intelligencer where he called outsourcing “a gnat in an elephant’s ear.” Evidently, K&L Gates is the elephant, LPO’s are the gnats, and I’m not sure who the clients are supposed to be. Perhaps Peter “Aesop” Kalis can let us know in a future fable.
It’s not that Kalis has his head in the sand when it comes to cost savings that can be generated by moving work out of places like New York and Washington. It’s just that in his world he doesn’t view Mumbai as all that different from Pittsburgh.
Maybe he’s right about that?
Continue reading “We Love It When Peter Kalis Tells Us How the World Works”
“Knowledge Economy”
An environment in which a person has run up $150,000 in student loans to pay for a law degree only to see jobs exported to India whose citizens are apparently very knowledgeable about the U.S. legal system.
Example: “The best job in the knowledge economy is plumbing because nobody with an advanced degree knows how to use Drano.”
– a Yahoo! Finance article on office buzzwords to avoid
This has all happened before, and this will all happen again. So say we all. At the beginning of the recession, just weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, we brought you a New York Times article from 1990 that illustrated the similarities between the tough legal job markets created by Bush 41 and Bush 43.
Today, we run the DeLorean even further back in time, and to an entirely different country. A loyal reader was cleaning out his office and came across an article from The Law College Magazine of Bombay, India, from 1930. The piece is entitled: “Is It Worthwhile? A Frank Talk With Budding Lawyers.” And it’s all about whether a person should pursue a two-year law degree in India in the 1930s.
Folks, let me tell you: some people worry that India will become the new market for American legal jobs, but that’s not the real fear. The real fear is that American law students will become like Indian law students in 1930.
And maybe that process is already well underway….
Continue reading “Back to the Future: What the J.D. Class of 2011 Can Learn From Indian Law Students in 1930″
Over the summer, we wondered: what can law firms do to prepare for a possible double-dip recession?
