By Susan G. Manch

In the U.S. and abroad, law firms are continuing to revise staffing strategies. While some firms and practices are busy, others wait for the recovery to have a positive impact. According to www.lawShucks.com, over 4000 attorneys have been terminated since January 1, 2009. We have learned a great deal from our position on the front lines helping firms develop effective plans for reductions in force and assisting associates and partners in managing successful career transitions.

Managing Partner Outplacement Effectively
As fall 2009 approaches, rather than the now traditional focus on OCI and recruiting, firms are contemplating further reductions in headcount.  Our experience tells us that the next wave of reductions is likely to focus more heavily on partners—both non-equity and equity.  While there is no more difficult decision, many firms see no alternative.  From late 2008 to summer 2009, five US and four UK law firms publicly announced cuts to their partnership ranks.  Many more firms have quietly followed suit.  These decisions are difficult.  Care must be taken to ensure that the affected partners are afforded considerate transitions consistent with their long-term contributions to their firms.  Senior lawyers with or without practices are likely to move into positions elsewhere that could benefit the firm in the future.

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By Susan G. Manch

If you are reading the legal press these days (and frankly, who isn't?), you are likely to hear pundits opine that law firms must switch to merit-based compensation in order to maintain profitability. If we were back in the boom times - the days of firm concierges and summer booze cruises - these would be fighting words. Before the massive layoffs that accompanied the arrival of 2009, the sacrosanct nature of lockstep associate pay was such that a firm's public support for even the idea of applying objective standards to associate compensation would ruin their recruiting chances on any top law school campus, and would indeed have earned them the dreaded "TTT" moniker on the blogs (third-tier toilet, for non-bloggers).

What a difference a year makes.  Today the few firms that already employ a merit-based approach tout their foresight publicly, when only a year ago they would have gone to great lengths to describe their pay approach to recruits as “just like lockstep”.   Now we hear about transitions to a merit-based approach described as not only inevitable, but as if firms could wave a wand and make it happen overnight.

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By Diane Costigan

Why is it that whenever I do any formal work around stress management, such as conducting a workshop or writing an article, it always seems to be under the most stressful of circumstances?  For example, here I am writing an article on stress management two days before I leave for vacation.  My schedule is packed, I don’t have enough hours to accomplish everything on my do list before I go and I’m writing an article on stress management! 

As I see it, what better a time for a stress management coach to write about stress?  Sensing that I was on the edge of the stress cliff as I like to call it and that the article could easily tip me over, I decided to follow my own advice and SNAP out of it.  I introduced the SNAP model for effective stress management in a previous article written for the New York Law Journal, but this is a great time to revisit it.      

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