BigLaw Ends; Women, Minorities Hardest Hit

There's an old joke about a propensity amongst dead tree media (particularly The New York Times) to recast every general disaster as something with a particular impact on women and minorities (it's easy enough to query for a few examples).

There have been thousands of layoffs of attorneys and staff from BigLaw firms over the past couple of years and the bloggers at Law Shucks have been better than most at tracking the numbers and appreciating the impact of this change in the legal landscape. Whether it's truly a disaster for those of us not directly affected by those layoffs is debatable, as is the suggestion that the layoffs have affected women and minorities more severely than others; those issues are but two of the many covered by Law Shucks in this week's Blawg Review #255. Commemorating the single worst month for BigLaw layoffs — March 2009 — and warning of the "Ides of March" which have treated the legal profession so cruelly, other highlights of this week's Blawg Review include free agency in legal practice and in sports, the political implications of back waxing, and a law for Davids which might just be a weapon for Goliaths as well.

Kevin Thompson, the current holder of the Blawg Review of the Year title, will host next week's Blawg Review #256 at his Cyberlaw Central blog. It certainly seems appropriate that a pleasantly geeky blawg will host that edition, 256 representing both 2^8 (two to a power of a power of two!) and the number of different values in an eight-bit byte.