“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” – Warren Buffet

When waves are high, you can’t see what’s hidden beneath the surface. But when the tide goes out, things become exposed. And the current recession is exposing the legal industry again. Only this time, it’s likely to be even worse than the downturn of 2008-10, which led to a “lost generation” of lawyers.

So while there was a period of recovery during the 2010s for the legal industry, what we are facing now is likely the Great Recalibration of the legal industry.

The Shrinking of Big Law

Big Law’s Great Recalibration will be of size. Here are some recent items:

I could go on here at length. So as to not belabor the point, let’s just acknowledge that there is another culling going on in Big Law. Except this one will be worse than the financial crisis due to the likely long and slow economic recovery period we’ll face because of Covid-19