Morgan Lewis & Bockius is offering voluntary buyout packages to all its legal secretaries in the U.S. According to Above the Law, which broke the story Monday, the separation agreements being offered include two weeks’ salary for each year of service up to 52 weeks' pay — which it says is quite generous compared to the six-month cap being offered at other large law firms.
In a statement, Morgan Lewis confirmed the buyouts but was quick to point out that the offers are purely voluntary in nature and not a precursor to potential layoffs.
“As we continue to focus on technology innovation and cost effective solutions for our clients, as well as the practice needs of our lawyers, we have decided to offer our US-based legal secretaries a voluntary separation opportunity. This is a purely voluntary offering, and we have no current plans for a group involuntary separation program, regardless of the level of participation in the voluntary offering,” the firm said.
It is not known how many secretaries received the offer.
Large law firms have been de-emphasizing the use of legal secretaries for quite some time. A generation or two ago, each lawyer at a major law firm would have their own secretary. But with the age of automation and the willingness of firms to allow young lawyers to type their own legal briefs, that ratio gradually declined to two lawyers for every secretary then three-to-one and now four-to-one.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently published a list of the fastest declining jobs in America and legal secretaries were among them. The BLS projects the number of legal secretaries will decline to 142,500 from 180,100 by 2028. The average pay was listed at $46,000.
Conversely, big law firms are contracting with software vendors to do the work that secretaries, paralegals and contract attorneys traditionally had performed. Earlier this year, Morgan Lewis signed a contract with Chicago-based software provider NexLP to enhance its capacity to use artificial intelligence and machine learning in its client work.
Morgan Lewis also has an e-data team that has grown largely with non-lawyer technologists to almost 60 people. Team leader Tess Blair said in April that the firm plans to add at least 15 more employees in the next year or two. Most of those new hires are filling positions that did not exist five to 10 years ago, such as industrial designers, data scientists and automation specialists.
Blair added that Morgan Lewis needs more development talent than processing because the firm plans to focus on developing its own software tailored to its own needs, which would reduce the number of vendors with which it contracts.
Morgan Lewis has doubled in size over the past decade to about 2,000 lawyers, opening several new offices on four different continents.
Local attorneys
| Rank | Prior Rank | Name / Prior rank (*new or not ranked) / |
|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP |
2 | 3 | Cozen O'Connor |
3 | 4 | Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin PC |