Thursday, bloody Thursday

Dubbing it "Bloody Thursday," Employment Law 360 ran a piece last week talking about the firing of 748 lawyers and staff in different firms in different parts of the country. ABA reporter Martha Neil summed it all up in her headline on ABA Journal Law News Now, "Bloody Thursday: 6 Major Law Firms Ax Attorneys." She notes in her Feb. 12 piece that "it isn't over yet." (I'm not just a casual observer of this phenomenon; it happened to me.) Likely, all this will result in a seismic shift in how legal services are delivered and charged (RIP, billable hour?). But I want to blog instead on how managers should deal with the stressed-out survivors. The December 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review has an article, "Dial Down the Stress Level," by Stewart D. Friedman. His advice: Show empathy in concrete terms toward those left, i.e. asking, "What can we do to help you -- at work and at home -- so you don't burn out or stress out?" Memo to managing partners: Telling the survivors to work harder to keep up profits per partner ain't going to motivate.