Timing is everything

Speaking of the coming obsolescence of, check out this opener from today’s NY Times 

“You know things are bad when even lawyers are getting laid off. In downturns of years past, law firms exploited corporate failures and bitter, protracted lawsuits to keep busy and keep billing.”

Well, that’s one way to say “making lemonade” (and take a swipe at lawyers).  The rest of the piece rehashes the parade of horribles familiar to all BigLaw observers: dissolution (e.g. Thelen), layoffs (White & Case) and mergers of necessity (PoGo).  Then this observation:

“A wave of big company litigation — those suits that pit armies of associates against each other — has also not materialized. A recent survey by one big firm, Fulbright & Jaworski, found fewer large companies reporting new lawsuits against them this year.”

I think it fair to say that the Times drops the ball by relying on that survey. As this blog noted here,

“Unfortunately, the extra-fluid nature of the ongoing financial mess renders the findings of any such annual survey immediately stale.   The Fulbright survey was conducted between mid-May through mid-July of this year.  In other words, post-Bear Stearns’ demise and the start of the subprime implosion yet before the bloodbath of the last two months.”  

And as was discussed (just for example) here and  here, there is reason to believe that a spate of

exploitation “countercyclical” work will develop for BigLaw associates.  Cold comfort for their laid-off colleagues, but still.

-posted by brian