Kit Chellel
The scale of unrest at DLA Piper has been revealed in the minutes of a meeting between senior staff and employee representatives regarding the firm’s redundancy programme.
The meeting was held shortly after the firm last month announced that it was to lose 30 lawyers and 110 support staff in the latest round of cuts.
A transcript seen by The Lawyer shows office managing partner Catherine Usher fielding angry questions about the size of the redundancy package being offered. Unlike firms including Linklaters and Clifford Chance, DLA Piper is offering the statutory minimum compensation to departing staff.
One employee at the meeting described the package as an insult, saying: “I’m not sure you appreciate the level of anger on the floors”. Others asked why partners had not been affected.
A staff member said: “If as a result of the packages on offer I see people potentially losing their homes … no amount of nice drinks with my boss will make up for it.”
Those who take voluntary redundancy receive their contractual notice period, statutory redundancy payment plus one month’s salary.
The minutes also reveal that the firm is hoping to save £12m in costs through the redundancies and that a recruitment freeze has been in place since June 2008. The hiring freeze is understood to exclude newly-qualified lawyers and ‘essential roles’.
Human resources staff told the meeting that since June last year 100 employees had left the firm with only 26 per cent of vacancies being filled in a bid to lower costs.
Some seven to eight per cent of partners have left the firm during the last year, according to the meeting notes, but it was not revealed how many had joined during this time.
One London-based DLA Piper associate told The Lawyer: “Morale is very low. There is a fear this is going to be repeated in three-month cycles.”
It has also emerged that the firm considered moving to a four-day week but decided this did not suit its business model.
The 30-day consultation ends on 20 March. A spokesman for DLA Piper declined to comment on the content of the meeting, but said: “We’ve engaged in a thorough process which in two of our offices has included a formal collective consultation process including the election of workplace representatives. The representatives have added to the debate and we would like to thank them for their contributions.
“We’ve responded to the questions put to us by elected representatives in an open and detailed manner because we felt this was the right thing to do.”
Readers' comments (33)
50 cents | 11-Mar-2009 1:56 pm
disgusting
Pure and other greed. How much would it cost each of the partners to give a handful of associates a half-decent package?
DLA may have been trying to mask themselves as one of the contenders, but this is really where the difference between them and the top firms becomes apparent.
Massively short-sighted own-goal!
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Proudly A&O | 11-Mar-2009 3:01 pm
Despicable!
I cannot believe that a firm of that size would let their staff go with minimum statutory pay. That is disgraceful. This is simply so that the partners can continue to afford their "lifestyle." BE ASHAMED PARTNERS OF DLA PIPER. I'm glad I turned down your job offer in the past. Even though I currently risk being made redundant at my present firm, at least we are being treated with dignity and a decent pay-off (the least anyone could ask for in the current climate!)
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Trainee | 11-Mar-2009 3:36 pm
Eh?
What has happened to integrity, respect and honour?
It's disgusting to hear how staff are being treated, the ones who do the real work. I bet DLA's recruitment brochure still has testimonials saying it's "a great place to work". Very misleading.
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Anonymous | 11-Mar-2009 3:56 pm
What nice people
for those of us with long memories and a course of dealings with the firm since its Bibb Lupton days this comes as no suprise, I have usualy founde them not particularly pleasnat to deal with and have rarely been impressed by their quality.
I alwasy was a little suprised at their ranking in the "happy place to wokr" surveys
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S woolfe | 11-Mar-2009 5:10 pm
Not Unusual behaviour for DLA
I once worked for DLA, was promised partnership, etc I brought in my own work. After 9 months I left due to their shabby employee practices so this is not surprising. As a General Counsel with a £1 mill budget guess what- DLA never will get any work from me! So they should remember poor behaviour now is remembered.
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John | 11-Mar-2009 5:14 pm
DLA Piper payoffs
I hope that when they want to recruit when the market picks up again, prospective candidates will remember this episode - cheap and nasty. Like corporate Britain generally - everything for the Olympians at the top and just crumbs, rags and tatters for the leser mortals.
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Anonymous | 11-Mar-2009 5:25 pm
DLA Piper
To the Bibb (sic) Lupton poster - not sure I am that impressed by your own quality given the number of errors, typographical and otherwise, in your comments!
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Anonymous | 11-Mar-2009 5:33 pm
DLA Piper
I think some people need to get a reality check here. Most firms other than those few who the legal press have alighted on are making statutory redundancy payments or not much better to those with whom they are parting company. It seems to me that DLA Piper has a considerably smaller percentage of it's lawyers at risk of redundancy no doubt in an effort to preserve more jobs. That strikes me as a more respectful and sensitive way of treating it's lawyer and support staff community than letting whole waves of people go in the current climate as e.g. the "ever so compassionate" A&O have done.
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Anonymous | 11-Mar-2009 5:39 pm
Law firms or charities?
The notion that people won't apply somewhere because they made people redundant on statutory terms seems a bit fanciful to me. Partnerships are there to make profits for the partners, no? Deal with it, and if you can't, go work somewhere else!
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Anonymous | 11-Mar-2009 5:39 pm
nonsensical business model
It is interesting to see what certain firms have to do in a time of crisis. While firing people in the UK, DLA in the US has moved to a full equity partnership. Wonder why? They are asking salary partners an average of USD150k to join the equity! When didiving the pie: tight equity; when things go bad, bring more people in. In certain countries (in a true "franchise" model where every country is truly separated), they have a equity/non equity ratio as high as 1:10 (in Italy I believe that there are 5 or 6 equity partners for a total of 100 professionals!!!!). How can anybody talk about quality?
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