When a law firm wants to lay off a bunch of attorneys but doesn’t want to send a sign of weakness to clients and peer firms, it opts for a stealth layoff. With a stealth layoff, the firm pins the blame on the associates for vague “performance issues.”

It leaves associates feeling guilty over a financial move entirely out of their control. If performed appropriately stealthily, it isolates embarrassed associates from discovering through their colleagues that they aren’t alone.

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Stealth layoffs are bad. And that’s why, no matter how unpleasant layoffs are, we give proper credit to firms willing to be straightforward and forthright when they part with folks.

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The only challenge with a stealth layoff is building a plausible record of performance issues. When top-billing associates with glowing reviews get sideswiped by a “performance-based termination,” they tend to blow the whistle on the whole ruse.

But what if the firm invents a series of impossible benchmarks for associates to meet within an incredibly short timeframe? Yes… yes, that just might work!

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According to an unconfirmed tip, one Biglaw firm is using the annual review process to implement three-month “performance improvement plans” for a number of associates with “zero notice of any performance issues the prior year.” While there’s nothing necessarily wrong about formalized professional development plans, setting a 90-day deadline to meet previously unannounced targets reads as a classic effort to set up attorneys to fail.

Given that the firm involved has a notorious history of stealth layoffs whenever the economy — or specifically, the tech sector of the economy — suffers the slightest economic hiccup, it’s hard to see this as a good faith attorney training.

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We’ll be monitoring this firm closely over the next three months.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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Biglaw, Layoffs, Stealth Layoffs