Above The Law is reporting that Paul Weiss has terminated as many as 45 staff attorneys. ATL previously reported that Skadden and Covington had terminated large numbers of staff attorneys. I suspect many other staff attorneys have been let go, albeit without the press coverage.
Here’s my question: who is doing the work formerly done by these staff attorneys? One real value of staff attorneys was the ability to put lower paid qualified attorneys on matters that required a lower billing rate. It seems unlikely these firms have decided to forego work. My guess is that they are pushing the work upstream to full-time, fully paid and more expensive attorneys in an effort to keep them busy. Fantasitic solution for everyone except the clients who pay more for the same work. If there is some other explanation, I’d love to hear it.