Blake Lapthorn launches second redundancy round
Blake Lapthorn launches second redundancy round" />Blake Lapthorn has announced a second redundancy consultation, with up to 30 additional members of staff facing the prospect of losing their jobs.
As reported on TheLawyer.com, last October the firm began consulting with 43 members of staff across its offices in London and the South East (2 October 2008). At the end of the consultation process a total of 33 people, including fee earners and support staff, lost their jobs.
The latest consultation again affects fee earners and support staff in London and the South East, with the real estate and corporate practices likely to bear the brunt of the cuts.
Managing partner Walter Cha said: “I know this further round of redundancies will be unsettling and we’ve not taken this course of action lightly.
“There has been a marked deterioration in the economy and the steps we’re taking will safeguard the longer term interests of the business and our remaining staff.
“Speaking with and supporting those of our staff involved is our top priority."
The firm currently has 732 members of staff, including 384 fee-earners.
For more on legal redundancies and job prospects, see our Legal Job Watch page.
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Readers' comments (1)
The All Seeing Eye | 29-Jan-2009 12:00 pm
Securing whose long term future?
Did he sit up all night to write that? Close, but no cigar I'm afraid. Surely those whose thought they were living the dream need more of an explanation for finding themselves shuffling along a queue of shellsuits. Why is a long term view only now being taken? I wonder what all these redundancy candidates were sold on applying to a "big firm" to lure them from jobs with less sonorous brand firms? Were they offered an employer with a short-term rainbow view of an everlasting credit bubble or an investment with a firm with a long term view that saw this sort of thing coming and had contingencies already in place so that this degree of wastage would not occur short of an unforeseeable second coming crisis? This was foreseeable but like a gambler who cannot stop placing bets these firms kept recruiting and expanding - building ever bigger barns in the expectation that this would result in bigger crops. The employees did their job of putting city hours in (foregoing the work/life balance) these firms took that for granted, messed it all up, took the profits, ate the meal and have left the employees to stand the cheque. They should all burn for this.
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