AFTER months of anxious planning, it was time for Hugh Verrier to finally press send.

In his two years as chairman of White & Case, the venerable Wall Street law firm, Mr. Verrier had already laid off 70 young lawyers and shuttered offices in Bangkok, Dresden and Milan. He had watched top partners flee to competitors and suffered a depressive 2008 holiday party at Cipriani’s, which had half the budget of the prior year’s $500,000 event  a Neroesque fete at the United Nations with fireworks and a band.

Now Mr. Verrier, who had worked exclusively at the century-old firm since leaving Harvard Law School in 1982, sat in his office high above 44th Street and Avenue of the Americas, considering the e-mail message he was about to send. It announced that 200 more lawyers would lose their jobs, nearly 1 in 10 at the firm over all  and not just young associates with everything in front of them, but some million-dollar-a-year ones like himself, the ones with twin mortgages, kids in private school and no Plan B.

“I greatly regret having to take these actions,” Mr. Verrier wrote, making a nod to the “deterioration of the global economy” and the need to slash expenses in recessionary times. Then he dropped the bomb: “a reduction in the number of our partners commensurate with current and anticipated needs.”

The reaction was swift and frantic. Partners who were staying scurried to protect their favorite workers; résumés were burnished and beamed out to recruiters.