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With the Fed's recent quantitative easing measure (any econ/mba folks feel free to explain that further if you like, but as I understand it, this would be a boon to exports/manufacturing), coupled with the 3rd straight month of job growth sufficient to stabilize the unemployment rate (along with other positive news), would you say we have hit the "knee" of the curve, so to speak? That is, is the economy now positioned to make more rapid and tangible gains? In short, will the legal industry stop shedding 10,000 jobs annually?

Or does the bad news still so far outweigh the good that it would be irrationally optimistic to think things are looking up?

46,700 legal sector jobs lost in 2009
2,900 legal sector jobs gained so far in 2010
This is a serious reversal in legal sector hiring, but with a net loss of 300 legal sector jobs last month it is probably too early to start celebrating just yet.

schnoodle wrote:With the Fed's recent quantitative easing measure (any econ/mba folks feel free to explain that further if you like, but as I understand it, this would be a boon to exports/manufacturing), coupled with the 3rd straight month of job growth sufficient to stabilize the unemployment rate (along with other positive news), would you say we have hit the "knee" of the curve, so to speak? That is, is the economy now positioned to make more rapid and tangible gains? In short, will the legal industry stop shedding 10,000 jobs annually?

Or does the bad news still so far outweigh the good that it would be irrationally optimistic to think things are looking up?

Looking up? Maybe. Still so shitty as to be unrecognizable compared to the boom years? Definitely.

Kohinoor wrote: Looking up? Maybe. Still so shitty as to be unrecognizable compared to the boom years? Definitely.

Yep. Japan had a similar banking collapse in 1997, and they're still "recovering". Way I see it, when the Japanese economy starts to see robust growth, we'll know that we only have another 12 years to wait for our own economy to really be back on its feet.

Renzo wrote:

Kohinoor wrote: Looking up? Maybe. Still so shitty as to be unrecognizable compared to the boom years? Definitely.

Yep. Japan had a similar banking collapse in 1997, and they're still "recovering". Way I see it, when the Japanese economy starts to see robust growth, we'll know that we only have another 12 years to wait for our own economy to really be back on its feet.

We are now looking up from the bottom of a pretty deep well. biglaw contracted by as much as 80% in some markets. The question now is whether this is the new normal. Even if it isn't, nobody posting here today will reap significant benefits of a recovery at OCI.

Yep. Japan had a similar banking collapse in 1997, and they're still "recovering". Way I see it, when the Japanese economy starts to see robust growth, we'll know that we only have another 12 years to wait for our own economy to really be back on its feet.

But our stock market hasn't done what Japan's did.

Agreed. I don't think you can base our recovery on Japan's. Yes, there are some similarities but there are also huge differences in our economies, recovery response and lead up to the crash.

It will be a slow recovery though. On average, I believe it takes 7-8 years to recover from a recession that was precipitated by a banking crisis, at least those are the numbers I've seen thrown around by economists. Even with a "recovery" unemployment rates tend to be a lagging indicator and the legal market also tends to lag behind other sectors.

Of course these are all generalizations and no one really knows. If someone did, they wouldn't be posting it on here, they'd be positioning themselves to capitalize upon the timing of the recovery.

our boom years were based on bubbles, do we really want to "recover" back to being a bubble economy? Slow and steady is a good way to be.

Borhas wrote:our boom years were based on bubbles, do we really want to "recover" back to being a bubble economy? Slow and steady is a good way to be.

Unless you're trying to break into biglaw.