At first it sounds like another Reduction-in-Force tragedy [RIF]: Reed Smith announced today that it's laying off 115 people in staff positions.
Then, read further Gina Passarella's coverage of the RIF in THE LEGAL INTELLIGENCER, and, we may start questioning if it's the firm's leadership and management who should be let go. The departments in which the layoffs are taking place include:
- Information technology
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Marketing
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Finance
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Practice Administration
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Knowledge Management
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Human Resources
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And, office services.
How many departments does it take to run a law firm? The firm only employs 3,500. According to some parameters that would constitute a small business. And, of that 3500, only a bit more than 1600 are lawyers, that is, the revenue-generators.
Perhaps the need for a RIF would never have occurred had these functions never been created. In business - and old-line law is quickly becoming just that: a business - those cost centers went the way of the Selectric Typewriter.
Either they were eliminated, mostly digitalized, consolidated into legal must-haves or totally outsourced. In the mid-1980s, Jack Welch, former head of GE, showed corporate America how to do far more with far less. Today, John Chambers, head of CISCO, is bringing Welch's model up-to-date. Incidentally, CISCO was among the first corporations to push-back on the billable hour.
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