THE ART OF MULTITASKING – Big Law giveth and it taketh away. And, as Law.com’s Patrick Smith reports, it may need to get used to doing both at the same time more than ever before. Goodwin Procter’s head-turning move in January—laying off dozens of firm personnel and then hiring up to 40 lawyers for a new Philadelphia office—caught the legal industry’s attention for the abrupt and awkward chain of events. However, industry observers say the two moves at Goodwin were likely unrelated and many other law firms will likely go through this sort of balance of pushing out lawyers and growing in key areas in the coming year—albeit with a slightly less-compressed time frame and less publicity.
MUM’S THE WORD – From Big Tech to legal tech companies, the word on the streets has been the same: layoffs. The official word, however? Well… kind of a lot of BS, actually. Sandwiched between actual staff cuts have been rumors of impending cuts. which are legal tech companies often either dismiss as false, decline to corroborate or avoid addressing altogether only to announce cutbacks days late. All of this, naturally, leaves many to wonder: Will we ever know the true extent of legal tech layoffs? As Law.com’s Isha Marathe reports: not bloody likely. “It has started to coalesce into an ugly stew where nobody is revealing what’s going on,” said Doug Kaminski, chief revenue officer at Cobra Legal Solutions.
