Clifford Chance loses eight fee-earners through redundancy
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Clifford Chance has shed eight fee-earners from its capital markets practice via redundancy.
It is understood that a number of voluntary redundancies have also been made in the real estate group.
The cuts follow the firm’s decision to significantly scale back its global partnership by around 15 per cent earlier this year.
A Clifford Chance spokesperson said: “We can confirm that the firm is proposing to make redundant a small number of lawyers from the capital markets practice in the London office. There are no plans for a large scale redundancy programme.”
It is understood that the firm is also bulking up its finance practice with lawyers from other groups after experiencing a mixture of reduced headcount following earlier redundancies and increased workloads.
In January this year The Lawyer reported on the magic circle firm launching a redundancy consultation affecting up to 80 associates across its network (8 January 2009).
In March Clifford Chance launched another consultation, reducing its support staff headcount by 115.
The firm’s US practice has been hit by several rounds of redundancies. In October last year Clifford Chance cut a total of 20 litigation associates from its New York and Washington DC offices. In March the New York office shed a total of 24 associates from its US transactional practice.
Readers' comments (3)
Larry La-La-Land Lamprey | 7-Nov-2009 0:35 am
When are big firms going to learn that shedding these people may work now, but the real culprits are as reported in a recent periodical: hyper-inflated partner wages for many years.
Cut partner wages by at least 50%. Plough the money into the business. See profitability come back, only if everyone is made to work to earn. Show-ponies are for 20th century-thinkers.
This is a new century with the need for an old attitude: thrift.
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A MC trainee in waiting | 12-Nov-2009 4:28 pm
Reading all this just adds to my confusion about which seats would be really safe to go into with a view of qualifying and being retained by the firm. Nothing seems stable or logical.
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Anonymous | 27-Jan-2010 9:03 am
Anybody else notice that a lot of the advertised vacancies require "excellent academics" even at senior level? Looks like firms are using the opportunity to fill themselves up with as many Oxbridge applicants as they can.
Anybody else want to set up a new firm and trounce the big boys who have got far too big for their shoes now?
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