Layoffs Soar as Crisis Deepens

More than 600,000 employees were laid off in the last month in the US.

A majority of them were from the manufacturing and financial sector – the two sectors hardest hit by recession.

The legal profession, which, as we’d reported, enjoyed a brief prosperity in the immediate aftermath of the recession with litigation cases against financial companies rising exponentially, has seen a spate of lay-offs since the beginning of 2009.

While traditionally, major firms have been reluctant to lay off employees en masse for fear of loss of reputation, the current economic woes have pushed many to take this step, albeit reluctantly.

The American Lawyer notes that the number of lawyers employed today is roughly the same as in October 2003 – a staggering figure that demonstrates the extent of the recession and how it has constricted growth. Respected, older lawyers are suddenly finding themselves without jobs, and younger associates find themselves dealing with six figure school loans without the six figure salaries they enjoyed.

What makes it significantly more difficult for laid off lawyers is the lack of sympathy that lawyers as a whole attract. This makes finding gainful employment elsewhere even more difficult.

The legal community acts as a sort of bellweather for the economic condition of the society as a whole – a canary in the cold mine. When the legal profession starts seeing job losses, you can bet that the recession is here to last.

Nonetheless, here’s hoping that the recession would act as a catalyst to restructure the legal profession with changes in law school curriculum, tuition fees, and perhaps even making top quality legal services more affordable.