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WilmerHale Lays Off 57 Staff
The National Law Journal
October 23, 2009
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr laid off 57 staff members at four different offices on Thursday, with the biggest cuts coming in Washington, D.C., and Boston.
In a statement, co-managing partners William Lee and William Perlstein said, "Following a careful review, we have decided to reduce the number of support staff in four of our offices. Our decision to realign overall staffing levels better positions us to respond to a changed business landscape and provide the highest quality legal services in a more cost-effective manner."
The layoffs at the 975-lawyer firm were first reported by Above the Law. WilmerHale has 466 lawyers in Washington.
To date, WilmerHale has avoided large-scale attorney layoffs. In June, the firm told the BLT that an undisclosed number of associates and counsel had been warned that they would need to start looking for new jobs. The firm gave them until the end of fall to move on, but insisted that this was not a layoff.
This article first appeared on The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times.
