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Take this Severance and Shove It

Over at Above the Law an email from a laid-off Paul Hastings associate has been posted. Here's the first paragraph of the email:

"The circumstances surrounding my departure from Paul Hastings have been deeply disappointing. It is one thing to ignore an email sent as a colleague is waiting to have her uterus scraped after a miscarriage, but it is wholly another level of heartlessness to lay her off six days after that. [Partner X] is the only one who expressed any sympathy after my miscarriage, and I am grateful to him for that."

And that's just a start, so head over to ATL to read the whole thing. This makes Paul Hastings look really bad (as it should), and no doubt they'll take a bashing in the blogosphere and perhaps even in their recruiting efforts on some campuses. But let's be honest--this could have been any big law firm. Oh sure, all the other firms will assure their associates that this type of thing would never happen at their law firm, where associates are so highly valued! But the truth is that every firm has some type of story like this lurking in a closet--Paul Hastings was just unfortunate enough to have it broadcast all over the Internets. The question to me isn't so much, What the hell is wrong with Paul Hastings? The question is, What the hell is wrong with a profession that has long tolerated this kind of thing?

One other note: Paul Hastings is obviously laying people off, but they are not alone. Most of these lay-offs will be couched as associate performance-related, instead of Firm performance-related. But 2Ls should be quietly watching this issue during the Summer and into next Fall.

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on May 06, 2008 (boomark / email).