BBC legal team escapes job cuts
BBC’s legal team is to escape the impending 1,800 job cuts unscathed and is planning to increase the size of its legal department.
The first of the new appointments is Herbert Smith associate Nicholas Wilcox, who joins the litigation team on 19 November.
“The legal team is not anticipating any changes,” said a spokesperson for BBC. “We have actually taken on new lawyers to fill vacant positions in the department.”
The spokesperson explained that any changes in the legal team had already occurred in the BBC’s last round of restructuring in March 2005, which saw 980 jobs cut.
BBC announced plans to scrap 75 jobs from its professional services arm, which includes its legal, finance, and marketing departments earlier in the week, but the legal team will be unaffected.
The legal department did suffer some loss earlier in the year with the departure of Jaron Lewis who left the in-house team to join Reynolds Porter Chamberlain as a partner last month. But it has also boosted its lawyer-count with the addition of Farrers media partner Nick Always, who recently joined the six-lawyer programming department.
