A Disturbing Trend…

♫ They used to tell me
I was building a dream.
And so I followed the mob
…
Brother, can you spare a dime? ♫

Lyrics by Yip Harburg and music by: Jay Gorney.

There is one magical quality of a picture – it can convey information in a manner that drives home a point faster than text could ever hope to do.

Accordingly it is one thing to read about the layoffs in the legal profession in a serial fashion in the news – it is entirely another to see that same information graphed and displayed in living colour.

When I came across the Layoff Tracker on LawShucks.com, it made me realize not only the numbers of people being laid off but also the geometric growth of same over time.

This particular chart certainly had the most impact for me:

2009 Year to Date Law Firm Layoffs

LawShucks reports:

“There have been 2,915 (1,231 attorneys, 1,684 staff) in calendar 2009 – 1,375 (537 attorneys, 838 staff) in February alone.”

Now these stats are American, but they certainly bring home the depth of the difficulties south of the border. One can only hope that this particular trend starts leveling off and turning around before many more people’s lives are thrown into turmoil and people are in search of their next dime…