There are no safe harbors in this storm for corporate counsel

Dec 3rd, 2009 by Mark Cohen

We just put to bed our next issue of Midwest In-House, a quarterly publication that Minnesota Lawyer puts out for corporate counsel in the upper Midwest. One of the things we mention in this quarter’s installment is a few statistics from the Hildebrandt 2009 Law Department Survey. Most of the data came from 2008, when the economy was down, but not quite yet out. Nonetheless, the results were not very encouraging for lawyers.

Of the 231 participants surveyed, 30 percent had reduced or were planning to reduce their lawyer headcount. So much for the myth of an in-house job being a port in the storm during a downturn.

Here’s some more bad news for corporate lawyers working n traditional law firm settings: A whopping 72 percent of the survey’s respondents have either asked for rate reductions from outside counsel or reported that they may do so in the near future.

The heady days of big expense accounts and bonuses in the corporate law world seem to be over (for the time being at least). Instead of popping that champagne cork, corporate law associates are trying to keep busy, hoping that don’t get that message to go see the managing partner …