Law Firms Use Downturn as Opportunity to Ax Older Partners, Recruiter Says
Many of the stories of layoffs detail the unemployment woes of associates and legal staffers who are being axed by large law firms scrambling to cope with the economic downturn.
But partners are also being cut, and those who are hardest hit are older partners, legal recruiter Jackie Finn tells Washington Times. The trend is emerging as the number of unemployed lawyers reached 31,000 in the first quarter, up from 20,000 last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Law firms are “using this as an opportunity to let go people who maybe were at the tail end of their careers,” said Finn, of Finn and Associates in McLean, Va. “Maybe they were trying to hang on because their 401(k)s are down, but they’re not getting enough hours,” she said.
Another recruiter, David Landau of Washington, D.C.-based Klein, Landau and Romm, said associates are being hit harder than partners.
“The associate market [in the Washington area] is just getting hammered,” he told Washington Times. “This is as bad as I’ve seen it. The worst I’ve seen it before this was ‘91 to ‘92, and I suspect this is deeper and is going to last longer. Firms have been laying off at a regular pace. Up to 12 percent of their associate ranks have been laid off.”
