the comment one manager made to me that "Programmers are a dime a dozen these days" stating that I could easily be replaced by someone willing to work for less.

Apparently the local big law firms don't downsize, RIF, or layoff, they just try to get employees to quit their jobs. If you quit your job, you look bad, as it looks like disloyalty. If you get fired in under a year, it is a good sign that you failed probation and were a bad employee. Yet if you make it 3 years or more, and are fired, it is a good sign that you either outgrew your job and couldn't advance, earned too much, or they didn't want you earning a pension (which I would have started earning in my 5th year, hence the 4 and a half year cutoff). Laywers are kind of hard to figure out sometimes, they do things differently than other companies for reasons known only to them.