In the 2005 European Law Department Survey (with Laurence Simons), to date 17 departments have participated in both. For the absolute numbers of lawyers reporting to the general counsel in Europe, the median change was zero: four departments had the same number of lawyers both years. Five departments had one more or one less lawyer; four went up or down by two lawyers; one by three lawyers. The extremes were found with one law department that reported 26 more lawyers, and one lost 21 lawyers.
As a percentage of the 2004 numbers, the changes were much more significant. Eight departments had less than a 10% shift in staff; two less than 21%; four less than 31%; and five with a lawyer staffing shift of 30% or more from the 2004 number.
Admittedly a small sample, but still the changes in just one year in the number of lawyers – somewhat nominally but quite a bit as a percentage – are in total quite dramatic.