Paralegal Employment Watch: Parker Poe 'Separates' 13 Attorneys and Additional Staff

From our friends over at Above The Law:  Parker Poe, a Charlotte based law firm, laid off 13 attorneys and an undisclosed number of support staffers yesterday.

A firm spokesperson confirmed the news last night:

Parker Poe did, today, separate 13 attorneys from our firm.

The attorneys had less-than-one to 3 years of experience with our firm.

Depending upon their years of service with the Firm they received up to 3 months severance.

At least they waited until after the holidays before they "separated" people from gainful employment.

Read what our tipsters are saying after the jump.

Tipsters report a support staff were laid off as well. But our sources also report that Parker Poe was upfront about the reasons for the layoffs:

There were no indications layoffs were in the works and they were told it was not performance based.

Parker Poe isn't the first firm to fire stub-first years. Gunderson Dettmer and potentially Proskauer Rose have done so as well. It's just another reason for 2009 summer associates to take their summer very, very seriously.

But these are the first layoffs at Parker Poe in response to the global financial crisis, which is pretty amazing given the business environment in Charlotte.

Good luck to the recently unemployed.(Source>>>)

Comments

[J REID CONYERS]

Attorneys with little experience are frankly going to bring in the least revenue. Hard times. In Atlanta, residential real estate attorneys are doing enormous volumes of business while commercial are doing virtually nothing. My developer sources and my general observation is that the commercial bust is coming full force at all of us. I would like to see a loft type idea in one of these shopping malls. It can be done with only modest retrofitting.

[J REID CONYERS]

Better explain myself more...
A large mall in Columbus Ga, which cost 34 million to build in the 1970s sold just BEFORE the crunch for 2 million. Sure it is not efficient to convert stores into residences but I feel you can get 30 cents on the dollar fairly immediate return. That used to sound pathetic but some of the big banks would love to get that versus what they are "in line " to get. (Sophisticated pun or so I think)