Legal News

Layoff Watch: Secretaries Suffering Too

By Ashby Jones

In the late 90s, when we worked as a BigLaw associate, a divide existed between partners and associates over the use of secretaries. Partners mostly used them and associates mostly didn’t. Chalk up the gap mostly to technology. In those days, partners dictated, and secretaries would transcribe and type. Associates, well-versed in Microsoft Word and otherwise clueless with dictation, would do it themselves. For partners, secretaries answered phones; associates used voice mail. Often, we went days without asking our kindly secretary to help us with anything.

We were reminded of all this this morning in reading the news at law.com of staff layoffs at both Bingham McCutchen and Holland & Knight. Holland & Knight is reportedly laying off 70 legal secretaries firmwide. “It was just too many people,” said firm spokeswoman Susan Bass. “We had some redundancies and inefficiencies.” Bingham reportedly laid off some 17 staff members in its Bay Area offices. “We don’t send and receive nearly as many faxes as we did five years ago,” said San Francisco managing partner Geoffrey Howard. “And that has an impact on staffing and on how we organize ourselves.”

Here at the Law Blog we’ve tracked associate and partner layoffs, but haven’t focused on staff layoffs. And these raise some different issues. For one, while lawyers at firms tend to come and go, sometimes secretaries and staff spend their whole career at the firm.

LB readers, we’d love to hear from you on this one. First, what are you hearing about staff layoffs? (Feel free to email me privately at ashby.jones@wsj.com.) And economic circumstances aside, are secretaries less secure at law firms than they once were, given changes in technology and generational mindsets?

Photo: iStockPhoto

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 21, 2008 (boomark / email).