January 22, 2009
THE DAILY TRANSCRIPT
SAN DIEGO – The law firm Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, which has an office in San Diego, laid off 114 employees nationwide Wednesday, including 52 attorneys.
The dismissals were announced in an internal memo issued by the firm’s chief executive officer, Joe Conroy.
“Given the continued slowdown we have experienced in pockets of the firm over the last five months and the forecast for continuing global economic turmoil in 2009, the executive and management committees concluded that a reduction is necessary at this time,” Conroy wrote. “At all levels throughout the firm we strive to provide an opportunity for everyone to grow professionally and at an appropriate pace.
“It was the collective judgment of the firm’s management that in the current environment we would compromise our ability to achieve that goal without reducing the firm’s headcount across the board.”
According to its Web site, Cooley employed approximately 725 attorneys before the layoffs, and it has 10 offices in the United States.
Cooley joins a list of approximately 10 firms that have reduced their workforce recently, according to legal recruiter Larry Watanabe. As an example he cited Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, which laid off 40 associates and counsel and 35 staff members in November.
“The name of the game is to stay as lean as humanly possible right now because nobody has any idea of where things are turning,” he said. “It’s just the economy; that’s really the core of it.
“The credit markets are so tight that a lot of firms are getting paid very slowly, so they’re not collecting like they use to.”
Watanabe, a San Diego partner with the search firm Watanabe Nason, said Cooley was particularly hurt by the decrease in transactional work, caused by the current recession.
He said the layoffs don’t mean Cooley is struggling financially or that it isn’t healthy.
“Firms are taking preventative measures now and making sure they’re not overstaffed,” Watanabe said.