<p>Above The Law has an article today by a current biglaw partner (anonymous), who discusses the "overcapacity" of biglaw and how more cuts may be coming to staff, associates, and even partners after Weil's recent layoffs (60 associates fired - 7%; 110 staff let go - approx. 50%; and 30 of 300 partners getting reduced compensation).</p>
<p>There's some doomsday language in there as well about how the current instability of biglaw could end up worse than 2008-2009's massive implosion. </p>
<p>I would expect the layoffs will be over 10%.</p>
<p>If you can’t raise more revenue and you want to increase profits, you have to cut employment expenses. Associates and income partners are next in line after administrative assistants.</p>
<p>The real problem will be during the next major recession, not now.</p>
<p>Is anybody actually tracking this based on the law firm website listings of associates from year to year in the AM 200? It can’t be that hard in this day and age and they always list all of their attorneys.</p>
<p>Mid sized firms are offering very competitive pricing and virtually the same quality of work. The BigLaw model worked during boom times, and worked during a fast run-up in prices, but is collapsing in a tighter market, as companies learn of other firms to handle their work for a fraction of the cost.</p>
<p>“The “BigLaw” model actually worked for the better part of a century. Technology and the lawyer glut are conspiring to make it obsolete.”</p>
<p>What’s conspiring to make it obsolete is a failure to strengthen the guild of lawyers and politically position themselves to guard their monopoly.</p>
<p>The quality of work was ultimately always going to be the same at BigLaw and midsized firms because corporate attorneys are essentially fungible at a certain level of experience.</p>
<p>I argued about this with a partner I worked with early in my career. My point was that the associate work really didn’t <em>need</em> associates to do it, since it was often mindless. However, from a standpoint of the profession, you want <em>inefficiency</em>, not efficiency because you are draining money as much money as possible from the corporate coffers and would prefer opacity to transparency.</p>
<p>Technology is always subject to political and social oversight.</p>
<p>“What’s conspiring to make it obsolete is a failure to strengthen the guild of lawyers and politically position themselves to guard their monopoly.”</p>
<p>This is correct, especially if one compares the ABA to the AMA. There are no-as in zero-non-AMA accredited allopathic medical schools in the country. And the AMA has held the line on accredited medical school spots also. The ABA? California alone is chock-full of unaccredited law schools(the “California Bar Only” schools) and accredited schools have sprouted like mushrooms.</p>
<p>But your statement has always been correct, which is why it doesn’t apply with any particular relevance now. The real problem is that the ABA has decided to eat its own, with an age-fueled gap between the haves and have-nots(e.g. approving off shore legal services, thereby saving established firms $$$ while making it even harder for new grads to find work). </p>
<p>Even years ago(30years, when I graduated), it was haves vs. have-nots; big name schools produced the lion’s share of big law associates, the rest of us…not so much. The “average salary” survey that the ABA publishes has always been a source of amusement.
With new technology and a ton of unemployed lawyers-both domestic and foreign-big law is being hit by the penny-pinchers who had always squeezed the little guy.</p>
<p>"This is correct, especially if one compares the ABA to the AMA. There are no-as in zero-non-AMA accredited allopathic medical schools in the country. And the AMA has held the line on accredited medical school spots also. The ABA? California alone is chock-full of unaccredited law schools(the “California Bar Only” schools) and accredited schools have sprouted like mushrooms.</p>
<p>But your statement has always been correct, which is why it doesn’t apply with any particular relevance now. The real problem is that the ABA has decided to eat its own, with an age-fueled gap between the haves and have-nots(e.g. approving off shore legal services, thereby saving established firms $$$ while making it even harder for new grads to find work)."</p>
<p>You are right that my statement has always been correct.</p>
<p>BigLaw is now being eaten by a problem that they created, but it’s more than the ABA eating it’s own in the form of off-shore legal services. It’s also the sea of unemployed lawyers that they created.</p>
<p>I don’t think that it ever occurred to BigLaw that the have-nots could be used against them, in bulk, which is what seems to be an issue at the moment.</p>
<p>They always viewed the have-nots and unemployed as redundant, as opposed to a giant blob that could potentially be used to eat at their profits.</p>