It Sure Looks, Walks, Talks, and Smells Like an Economic Slowdown - Now Law Firms Can Lay Off W/O Blow-Back

It's come to this. The economy has soured. That's to the point that just about everyone in the loop gets it that it is downright necessary to lay off so that profits can continue to grow in challenging times.

Now law firms can conduct actual reductions-in-force without being perceived as really bad guys (and gals). For two years most have held back on that. They observed the pile-ons for law firms which did lay off in post-pandemic times. There was Cooley, for instance.

That was then. 

Kent Zimmermann, a consultant at Zeughauser, describes the shift in American Lawyer. The code for that development is: making lawyers "more accountable." (In non-legal such as IBM, SAP, and Dow, the term is "belt tightening,")

Therefore, lawyers at all levels in large law firms should be braced for terminations. The content on professional anonymous networks such as Reddit Big Law and Fishbowl Big Law is bound to become a chronicle of RIFs. That's a major change from the current angst about the possibility of being axed and speculation about severance and web time. 

So here we are. At this phase of the economic craziness, RIFs have to happen in Big Law. That's a must to increase the Profits Per Equity Partner. Otherwise the brandnames will flee.

Big Law operates on star wattage. If it dims law firms could actually go out of business. Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp warned about that dynamic in a Bloomberg Law interview. To keep the twinklers twinkling enormous financial reserves are required for their compensation. 

It's a Catch-22. Building and maintaining those reserves entails bringing in lots of revenue. To bring in that revenue requires the brandnames.

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