BulletProofBlog the blog on crisis communications

It is a staggering moment for the legal profession as nearly 15,000 jobs have been lost since the onset of this recession. For lawyers and support staff alike, the retrenchment remains unrelenting. No suprise, the crisis is global.

It was during the recession of the early 1990s that the legal profession first lost its innocence as top Wall Street firms, which had never laid off a single associate for economic reasons, were compelled to do so en masse. Then as now, everyone lamented exorbitant law firm cost structures and deficient growth management. Then as now, there were salary freezes, lifted, of course, as soon as the recession ended. Expect the same cycle to unfold now, however protracted the recovery may be.

But there is a positive lesson that law firms can learn from the prior recession or even earlier, from the market crash of 1987. A journalist then, I spoke to the managing partner of a national firm on that fateful day. "What are you guys going to do?" I asked.

"Oh, market our bankruptcy practice," he responded cheerily.

Fortunately, this firm had a strong enough litigation practice to subsidize a communications program to address the needs of businesses in a collapsed economy. Fortunately, this firm had a two-tier equity structure with cash reserves that allowed retraining of current staff to deliver legal services adapted to the crisis. Lesson: firms that are provident during good times leverage the bad times.

During this crisis, additional factors up the ante - such as a buyer' s market levying unprecedented pressure on sellers and questions of compensation causing the same headaches for law firms that Wall Street is experiencing right now. It is in this context that we lately saw the liveliest discussion ever of alternative billing as a client-responsive strategy.

Significantly, the discussion was stimulated by Evan Chesler, Cravath' s presiding partner. It' s not the desperate law firms grasping for a lifesaver; it' s the profession-leaders who speak out, who market, and who seize on crisis as the best time to establish a leadership position. Chesler' s participation in the ongoing dialogue typifies professional services communications at its best. Amid adversity, law firms are well-advised to likewise communicate their visions of the future