Downturn hits legal profession

[n2doc]

Laid-off lawyer in predicament she never imagined
Steve Lopez
February 15, 2009
"I can't get a job anywhere."

I've been getting a lot of e-mails that start like that. This one was from Ellie Trope of Mid-City in Los Angeles, near La Brea, who lost her job more than a year ago. She wrote me after reading my column two weeks ago about the endless mob scene at the employment office in Van Nuys.

When people in banking and the mortgage industry were getting the heave-ho, it came as no surprise. In fact, on Friday I spoke to a banking executive with 20,000 employees under him who got fired in December after 21 years on the job. But I would have thought anyone with a law degree would be able to talk their way out of a layoff, file for an injunction, whatever.

Not so. Trope told me it's gotten much worse of late, and when I made some phone calls and checked on the Internet, I found that law firms in California and throughout the nation have been handing out pink slips by the dozens and the hundreds.

"Job cuts in U.S. legal sector hit 1,300 for January," said a headline at Legalweek.com.

"Today isn't over, but it already has a name: Black Thursday," said a Los Angeles County Bar Assn. blog this week, making reference to hundreds of layoffs in the legal biz that were announced around the world the other day.

more:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez15-2009feb15,0,7634251.column

[Double T]

1. mmmmm........ 1,300 FEWER employed lawyers............

sounds like a DAMN GOOD start!!!

[GentryDixon]

3. Not so.

This impacts the support staff of those 1300 lawyers as well.

[ThomWV]

2. What we need is less cops and more lawyers