US lawyer job cuts worse for 30 years

Global economic carnage has pushed US firms to make the deepest cuts in lawyer numbers for more than 30 years, according to The National Law Journal.

It said America’s top 250 law firms axed 5,259 lawyers in the last 12 months  – a number equivalent to all lawyers at two firms the size of Jones Day losing their jobs.

The four per cent decline in overall lawyer numbers to 126,669 is the first year on year fall since 1993 and only the third decline since 1978, when statistics began.

The savage cuts this year have wiped away nearly one-third of the growth that firms made during the past five years and puts many of them back below 2005 levels.

Of the top 75 law firms, 15 cut more than 100 lawyers and in the top 50, seven cut more than 200 lawyers.

The firm with the largest percentage decrease was Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, which cut 26.4 per cent of lawyers to 468 from 636 in 2008.

Partner levels however, remained unscathed. The National Law Journal said number of partners in 2009 was 53,468, compared with 52,980 in 2008, an increase of 0.9 percent.