A merger followed by a decimation of the acquired company’s law department

What will happen to Sun’s hefty legal department, which listed 170 lawyers in 2006 after Oracle acquires it? Consider the axe orgy after Oracle’s acquisition of BEA in April 2008. Of the 20 or so lawyers and eight legal staffers that worked in the BEA legal department, only two staffers and one lawyer based in Sweden have jobs at Oracle now, according to Zusha Elinson, The Recorder, April 24, 2009 That means 95 percent of the lawyers in the acquired company were cut down.

“Unless they have a very unique area of expertise where there might be a need for Oracle, I would suggest they would start looking for jobs,” said a former BEA lawyer in the article. “A year after the thing closes, my guess would be, less than 10 percent of the Sun legal department will be left” (See my post of Jan. 16, 2009: layoffs after mergers with 9 references.).