Let’s get this out of the way ahead of upcoming annual reviews. Biglaw has always been an up-or-out structure. Meaning, every year, low performers are let go. These are not a firm doing “layoffs” in any extraordinary sense. Covid led to a few unusual years of low forced turnover, and now juniors seem to freak out as soon as they hear of anyone being asked to leave their firm. But it’s normal at year end, for every firm, every year.

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Posting as :
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Hi Goodwin PR rep.

likefunny

“Up or out” is not a cover for culling the ranks at more junior levels. It refers to pushing out people who won’t make partner and happens much later than the layoffs people talk about here. That said, not all terminations are layoffs, obviously.

likesmart

That’s not what “up or out” refers to, though. That’s just being terminated for performance.

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Until the percent of “poor performers” equates to greater than 3% of the firm or grouping (jr mid sr). Then it is 95% layoffs.

If such layoffs are performance related then the firm is super sh*tty at either interviewing/selecting or mentoring/training or both. Afterall isn’t “higher quality legal education” the reason big law only hires from elite schools?

likesmartfunny

3% sounds like a reasonable enough benchmark for whether it’s likely performance-based or not. Regardless of the exact number, everyone also needs to remember that it’s a percentage, so you need to consider firm size when you hear stories of people being let go.

For example, there was a bunch of stories about Kirkland “layoffs” a couple years ago and the reporting came out that it was around ~30 associates firm wide. In a 300-lawyer firm that’s a pretty shocking 10% cut. But Kirkland has over 3500 lawyers so it’s actually less than 1%.

Conversely, if you are at a small firm and start hearing about firings you should freak out much sooner because even a handful of associates might represent a huge chunk of the total.

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Completely agree. It’s happening at my firm now because the review process already happened, but isn’t making headlines because it’s not unusual. I’m not defending the practice, but at most big firms, this is just business as usual. It’s often very confusing for other associates to see who specifically is being let go because we have no insight into how or why these decisions are made, but it isn’t a sign of an unusually toxic place. Just normal toxic.

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And I do not work at Goodwin*

funny

Thank you

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What about class drops?

This also happens every year. Firms can’t bill you out at a higher rate so it’s not even a good way to save money. They’d make more billing you out at the increased rate even with the increased salary

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