We received over 1,400 responses to our ATL / Lateral Link survey on layoffs, and last week we reported on associate fears and law firm strategies.

Today, we’ll talk about what attorneys are actually doing to protect themselves against, or cope with, a layoff.

Surprisingly, about 40% of respondents said that they weren’t doing a thing. A few commenters provided more detail on their non-coping strategies:

Drinking

crossing my fingers for three months’ severance

Drinking…. heavily.

Smoking weed; watching movies; working out; learning to play guitar

More details on how attorneys are responding to the slowdown, after the jump.

We received over 1,400 responses to last Wednesday’s ATL / Lateral Link survey on layoffs, which is slightly more than the number of attorneys actually laid off in last week’s Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Even so, roughly 70% of the respondents who hadn’t already been laid off said that they were at least a little bit afraid of joining their colleagues on the breadline.

And very few respondents thought their law firms were doing much to help avoid a layoff:

* About 19% of respondents said their firms were letting associates in slow practices keep their hours up by doing some work supporting the busier practices.
* But only 9% thought their firm would actually let them transfer from a slow practice to a busy one.
* And only 2% thought their firm would let them relocate to another office to find work.
* Similarly, only 2% said their firm was letting associates go part-time.

As lack of work gives way to lack of a job, firms’ support mechanisms for the downsized are looking a bit slim:

* Only 16% of respondents said their firm was providing ample notice to terminated associates, so they could find a new job.
* Only 15% said their firm was leaving laid off associates’ bios on the firm website while they looked for work.
* Only 4% of respondents said their firm was helping associates find positions with clients or with non-profits.
* Roughly 5% of respondents said individual partners at their firm were calling around to try to help associates find new jobs.
* 9% said their firm was making a career consultant available to the downsized.

More than a quarter of respondents, 26%, said their firm wasn’t doing anything to help associates deal with, or avoid, a layoff, and 35% of respondents said they didn’t know.

A few thoughts from the commentariat, after the jump.

On Monday, we reported on how you thought your firms should be managing the slowdown. In today’s ATL / Lateral Link survey, we’ll focus on how you’re personally coping, and what, if anything, your firms are doing to help.

Last March, we found that the most popular response to layoffs was to simply switch firms. About half of you planned to use headhunters to switch firms, and around 40% would network through friends.

But fewer than ten percent of you planned to take more drastic approaches by “rebooting” as a judicial clerk or tax LLM, or prepping for another state’s bar exam.

Now that layoffs have become painfully common, what are you actually doing?

Update: This survey is now closed. Click here and here to see the results.

—
Justin Bernold is a Director at Lateral Link, the sponsor of this survey.

We received about 900 responses to last week’s ATL / Lateral Link survey on how much severance and notice your firms have been giving laid off associates, and how the firms should be handling the slowdown.

Overall, only about a third of respondents thought that their firms were handling the slowdown well, but about the same number thought their firms were handling the slowdown poorly. The rest thought their firms were just doing “so-so.”

When asked how firms should handle the slowdown, associates responded with a pretty consistent line of thinking:

BETTER

Some respondents were actually in favor of layoffs — as long as it didn’t affect them:

Firing dead weight.

Get rid of non-profitable partners before cutting associates

Cutting under performing attorneys.

cut senior associates who milk hours and part timers

They should have eliminated worthless associates ages ago before they drained us dry. They should also not maintain so much vacant real estate.

Cutting the inflated ranks of secretarial and paralegal staff and eliminating retreats and other unnecessaries. But do not freeze associate salaries!

Ah, colleagues.

More after the jump.

In an ATL / Lateral Link survey last March, 53% of associates thought their firm would provide ample notice before a layoff, to give them enough time to find a new job. And 54% of associates expected a decent severance package.

But as the economy continues to chill, notice and severance packages may be suffering some shrinkage.

On the severance front, one tipster wrote in:

I remember back in 2003, one of my colleagues was laid off from our firm, and they provided him with six months’ salary and hired a professional career consultant/placement agent to help him land safely. At the time, 3 months’ was standard. This firm did all the right things, including telling him that it was purely for economic reasons and not performance related. The rewards to the firm were obvious - he joined the in-house legal team of a Fortune 50 corporation, and still looks back fondly at our former firm despite being laid off.

Things are much different now than in 2003, and it seems we’re lucky if we even get one month.

In today’s survey, we’ll take a look at how firms are handling notice and severance for their departed associates, and also ask how they should treat these issues.

Update: This survey is now closed. Click here to see the results.

—
Justin Bernold is a Director at Lateral Link, the sponsor of this survey.

We received about 1500 responses to last month’s ATL / Lateral Link survey on how much of your billable work in 2008 was really for “client billable” time, as opposed to pro bono or administrative matters.

Earlier in January, we had noted that more than a quarter of you couldn’t bill 1800 hours last year, but commenters pointed out that even these numbers were probably too rosy:

It is hard to tell how busy associates really were based on this data. One problem is that “billable hour” may mean different things at different firms. At some firms “billable hour” = client billable hours only. But many firms give billable hours credit for pro bono, recruitment and professional development work. I would be curious to see how much CLIENT BILLABLE hours associates had in 2008 and what they are expecting for 2009.

On the pro bono front, it turns out that the heart is only half empty. About a third of associates spent 100 hours or more on pro bono last year, and roughly 14% had more than 200 hours in pro bono:

Results: How many hours did you did you devote to pro bono matters in 2008?

Since relatively few associates had more than a hundred pro bono hours, there was generally only a one or two percent difference between the levels of “client billable” billable hours in 2008 and the overall billable hours reported. So, for example, while 14.32% of respondents fell short of 1600 billable hours last year, that percentage rose to 16.65% of respondents when only “client billable” hours were counted.

The table below compares your 2007 hours and predictions for 2008 (from our November survey) with the overall billable hours we reported last month and the “client billable” hours from our latest survey results.

Results: How many hours did you bill in 2007 and 2008?

These numbers are, as commenters predicted, a bit bleaker than last month’s results, but about 42% of respondents still managed to bill at least 2000 hours to clients last year, as opposed to pro bono or administrative matters.

Will that hold true this year?

Some commenters thought hitting 2000 hours was actually pretty easy:

4, 18: Um, I definitely billed way over 2000 hours last year… and that’s client billable. In litigation it’s pretty easy to do. I had four appeals (one of which was a bet-the-industry appeal that I was working 48 hour stretches on), like countless depositions, unending motion practice, and two full-blown trials. Do you know how much time you have to bill preparing for a 20 day trial? And then for the trial itself?

It’s easy to rack up crazy hours in litigation when you’re busy.

Other commenters disagreed:

Hitting 2000 hours for 2008 was doable because the bulk of the slow-down didn’t occur until September/October. Only because I had very high hours before then was I able to just barely hit 2000 hours for the year. 2009 will be much worse. I’m worried.

Among survey respondents, pessimists outnumbered optimists about 1.5 to 1:

  * Roughly 44% of survey respondents expected 2009 to bring fewer billable hours than 2008, with 21% expecting much lower hours.

  * About 29% of respondents, however, expected at least a few more hours this year, with almost 9% expecting many more hours.

  * About 27% of respondents expect 2009 hours to be about the same as 2008.

—
Justin Bernold is a Director at Lateral Link, the sponsor of this Associate Life Survey.

Last January, we did an ATL / Lateral Link survey on how often you cancelled your social plans because of work.

Notably, we found that “[a]round forty percent of associates missed dates,” usually because a partner asked them to finish something at the last minute.

But now that the economy has collapsed slowed down, some employees are beginning to get their lives back. Yesterday, even as Kash was updating us on an avalanche of salary freezes in Big Law, Gizmodo was praising at least one company that’s trying to heat things up overseas:

This just in: Canon is the world’s greatest camera manufacturer. And it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with their actual cameras.

In response to Japan’s aging population and Japanese couples’ propensity to have too few children to maintain the country’s population, Canon called off the traditional 12-hour workday twice a week, encouraging their employees to go home early and make mini Canon employees of their own.

CNN chimed in that, even though this (pro)creative office perk meant missing out on overtime twice a week, employees were psyched:

“It’s great that we can go home early and not feel ashamed,” said employee Miwa Iwasaki.

To my knowledge, Big Law has not yet adopted a go-home-and-make-babies policy (although parental leave policies have certainly improved). But Lateral Link CEO Michael Allen tells me that “several firms encourage interoffice dating, and wrt marriage actually give a bonus, i.e., like $10,000 if you marry within the firm.”

If that’s true, then it definitely adds a different flavor to some of the questions Marin’s been taking lately on inter-office romance, like this one last fall:

I’ve just been staffed on a relatively long term project with another associate. She and I went on one date a few months ago and hooked up, but that was it because she is batsh*t crazy. Since then she’s sent me a bunch of “let’s get lunch” emails and has “coincidentally” appeared at happy hour drinks when I’m out with people from the firm. I think this person is unstable and I don’t want to put myself in a position to be sabotaged by her. But I don’t want to appear like I’m rejecting work or that I’m not a “team player.” I also don’t want to make it known that I dated a co-worker. Any advice?

So, today let’s update last January’s survey to ask not only whether you were able to be social and be a lawyer at the same time, but also find out whether your firms (or you) support inter-office productivity, as it were.

Take the survey after the jump.

President Obama made a pretty interesting statement in yesterday’s inaugural address:

Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished.

But based on last week’s ATL / Lateral Link survey, which asked you how many hours you billed last year, these words of inspiration might not quite fit the legal profession. As we noted last week, more than a quarter of respondents were unable to bill even 1800 hours last year.

And many commenters suggested that the situation will be more dire in 2009:

Hitting 2000 hours for 2008 was doable because the bulk of the slow-down didn’t occur until September/October. Only because I had very high hours before then was I able to just barely hit 2000 hours for the year. 2009 will be much worse. I’m worried.

what are these “billable hours” of which you speak? i keep hearing they’re good to have, but i can’t find them anywhere. i’ve looked under the rug and everything!

Other commenters pointed out that even 2008 was probably a worse year financially than last week’s survey suggests:

It is hard to tell how busy associates really were based on this data. One problem is that “billable hour” may mean different things at different firms. At some firms “billable hour” = client billable hours only. But many firms give billable hours credit for pro bono, recruitment and professional development work. I would be curious to see how much CLIENT BILLABLE hours associates had in 2008 and what they are expecting for 2009.

Also, pro bono hours are way up, which is great for our day-to-day feeling of some accomplishment, but not as great for our future viability.

In today’s survey, we’ll focus on both issues: how much of your “billable” work last year was really for “CLIENT BILLABLE” time, and what do you think 2009 will look like?

Update: This survey is now closed. Click here to see the results.

—
Justin Bernold is a Director at Lateral Link, the sponsor of this Associate Life Survey.

We received over 2,200 responses to Monday’s ATL / Lateral Link survey, which asked you how many hours you billed last year.

In fact, we received more responses than most of you billed hours.

Although today’s Am Law Litigation Daily points out that litigation in federal courts actually rose by 9 percent last year, that doesn’t appear to have done much for your timesheets.

The table below compares your 2007 hours and predictions for 2008 (from our November survey) with the actual experience you reported on Monday.

Results: How many hours did you bill in 2007 and 2008?

Back in 2007, roughly 70% of respondents billed at least 2000 hours last year (not counting associates with stub years), with over a third billing at least 2200. And over 11% — almost one in eight associates — were in the 2400+ zone.

But by November, almost 20% of associates thought they would fall short of 1800 hours for 2008. Even so, less than 8% feared they would not make 1600. And roughly 56% of associates still expected to hit at least 2000 hours in 2008. More than a fifth of respondents thought they would even reach 2200.

Reality was a bit less kind:

• A crushing 14% of respondents fell short of 1600 hours, almost twice the number predicted back in November.


• More than a quarter of respondents, 27%, could not make 1800.


• And a little less than half of associates, 49.6%, broke 2000.

I billed over 2000 hours, but had over 300 pro bono this year.

Another suggested that this year’s performance will be much weaker than last year’s:

Hitting 2000 hours for 2008 was doable because the bulk of the slow-down didn’t occur until September/October. Only because I had very high hours before then was I able to just barely hit 2000 hours for the year. 2009 will be much worse. I’m worried.

Feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments.

You know, as long as you’re not billing anything today.

—
Justin Bernold is a Director at Lateral Link, the sponsor of this Associate Life Survey.

Back in November, we asked you to predict what your hours would look like for 2008, and we reported some worrisome results:

This year, the mighty have fallen, and so have their hours. While roughly 56% of associates still expect to hit at least 2000 hours in 2008, the number reaching 2200 is expected to fall from 35% to about 21%.

Meanwhile, the number of associates who won’t even make 1800 hours has roughly doubled, rising from 9.86% to 19.54%. Almost one in twelve associates don’t even expect to make 1600 hours, way up from 3.29% a year ago. (Remember, these numbers exclude stub years.)

But as gloomy as those results were, many commenters expected a much more dire view:

These reported hours seem WAAAAAAYYY high. People here are averaging maybe 80-110 hours per month. I myself would be happy to hit 1200 or 1300 by year-end.

These numbers are still too high. Everyone I talk to at my firm and others is super slow in corporate. The fact that only signle digits are below 1600 for almost all class years is suspicious. People hitting 1400 are having an above average year at many firms.

If I hit 1100, it’ll be a miracle (and a shitty Christmas).

Oh, and my small corporate group at a satellite office is looking at a range of approximately 700 - 1200. I think the group will likely be getting smaller…

Um, some of us are padding our hours and are still coming in at under 1600. There was literally no work for months, though things have picked up somewhat in the past couple of months.

And, let’s face it, you know last year’s billable hours must have been awful if the presiding partner of Cravath wants to scrap the system.

So, now that 2008 has come to an end, let’s see if last year’s predictions hold true. Today’s ATL / Lateral Link survey will focus on what your billable hours actually were.

Update: This survey is now closed. Click here to see the results.

—
Justin Bernold is a Director at Lateral Link, the sponsor of this Associate Life Survey.