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Adopting COVID-19 Cuts, Law Firms Balance Image and Economics

By Patrick Smith
May 01, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken the biggest industrywide toll on law firms since the Great Recession, with many of the same unfortunate hallmarks: layoffs, furloughs, compensation cuts and deferred classes. (See, "Pay Cuts, Layoffs, and More: How Law Firms Are Managing the Pandemic," The American Lawyer (April 20, 2020).

But even as firms echo their response to this crisis, they are also showing they learned from the experiences of a decade ago, including the negative effects of delivering cuts unevenly, clumsily or with unnecessary secrecy.

There's no one-size-fits-all communication strategy when cuts are required. But many firms have appeared in recent weeks to be signaling compassion, embracing (relative) transparency and sharing sacrifices across lawyers and staff. That can help make even painful cuts less harmful for a firm's internal morale and outside reputation, experts say.

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