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&lt;p class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;FONT-WEIGHT: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold&quot;&gt;Sunday&amp;#8217;s &lt;i style=&quot;mso-bidi-font-style: normal&quot;&gt;Times&lt;/i&gt; takes two (at least) looks at the recession&amp;#8217;s effect on the business of BigLaw.&lt;span style=&quot;mso-spacerun: yes&quot;&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;The Business section features a piece which will be old news to even the most casual of industry observers: &amp;#8220;Chill of Salary Freezes Reaches Top Law Firms.&amp;#8221; The reporting relies heavily on the remarks of one David Lat, who observes, &amp;#8220;With salary freezes, you are seeing a sort of reverse ratcheting. If one firm sees a competitor lowering salaries, they feel it&amp;#8217;s safe to lower salaries, too.&amp;#8221; One fun takeaway from the piece: in 1968, when Cravath raised first-year salaries to $15,000, it was considered a radical move, &amp;#8220;akin to a shot heard round the world.&amp;#8221; (According this site, $15K is roughly $90,000 in today&amp;#8217;s terms.)&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;FONT-WEIGHT: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold&quot;&gt;Meanwhile, over in the glamorous precincts of the Styles section, it seems employees are burning an enormous number of calories in order to look busy so their bosses will think they&amp;#8217;re essential to the operation. Apparently, &amp;#8220;Looking busy when you&amp;#8217;re not in order to fool the boss can be something of an art form.&amp;#8221; Buried among the article&amp;#8217;s advertising executives, portfolio managers and Nobu waiters, are a few lawyers. (One of whom is a true innovator: he uses an oscillating fan to trick his office&amp;#8217;s motion sensor-controlled lighting system. Thus, he always appears to be burning the midnight oil.)&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt; &lt;p&gt;Another anonymous lawyer featured in the Styles article, a 40 year old corporate lawyer in the Manhattan office of a &amp;#8220;950-lawyer national firm,&amp;#8221; presents something of a case study in decline. When his billable hours began to evaporate last summer, Lawyer X continued to call clients in a &amp;#8220;non-billable, advisory capacity&amp;#8221; (whatever that means). X then tried scrounging billable work from other departments. Then X calls former clients. Then law school classmates. Then college classmates. (&amp;#8220;But they were all looking to save their own skins.&amp;#8221;) He found himself filling his time sheets with non-billable &amp;#8216;professional development&amp;#8217; items. Eventually, in what is revealingly presented as a desperate turn of events, he volunteers for&amp;nbsp;the firm&amp;#8217;s diversity recruiting and pro bono programs. When X is laid off, the reader is not surprised.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;FONT-WEIGHT: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;mso-spacerun: yes&quot;&gt;-posted by brian&lt;/span&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;MsoNormal&quot; style=&quot;MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt&quot;&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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Sunday’s Times takes two (at least) looks at the recession’s effect on the business of BigLaw. The Business section features a piece which will be old news to even the most casual of industry observers: “Chill of Salary Freezes Reaches Top Law Firms.

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