The legal services industry continued to slash payrolls in January with a loss of 1,300 jobs, according to the US Department of Labor.
The job losses in the legal sector were .003% of the 598,000 jobs shed throughout the US last month, as the national unemployment rate rose to 7.6%.
Since the current recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost 3.6 million jobs, about half of them in the last three months. The legal sector shed 14,500 during that period.
Recruiters on both the East and West coasts report that associate hiring at law firms has largely stopped, and firms are now mostly targeting partners with portable books of business.
The last time so few people were employed in legal services was in 2004.