Savvy firms will benefit from the recession blues, says Simon Young
Many law firms will have had difficult times over the last year or so in dealing with over-staffing issues and the conduct of redundancy programmes. In a profession where often working lives are spent in one firm only, and there are ties of loyalty both up and down, this has often been traumatic.
The depth of feeling against firms which have had to take these steps can be seen by the various blogs, and comments posted against the newswires declaring each latest batch of bad news. Ironically, these have often focused on the methods adopted by management, even where the necessity for cuts has been admitted. So, how can it possibly be suggested that there may be plus points resulting from these moves, as they move forward into post-recovery trading times?
The truth
The honest if unpalatable truth is that for some firms the clearances were a godsend, and offered a chance to take tough management decisions which otherwise would never have been made, as it would just have created too much trouble. In
