Field Fisher cuts 31 jobs as consultation ends
Field Fisher Waterhouse (FFW) has cut 31 support staff after a redundancy consultation lasting two months.
The consultation began on 14 November and involved 175 employees of the firm.
The cuts come after a separate consultation in the firm’s real estate department last September, which saw five fee earners and six secretaries leave the firm (TheLawyer.com, 8 August 2008). FFW has made 42 redundancies in total.
FFW managing partner Moira Gilmour (pictured) said: “Taking the decision to make redundancies is hard for any firm but with the outlook for the next two years uncertain, exercising prudent financial management is essential. We needed to take tough decisions, including reducing staffing levels.”
This week Macfarlanes launched a redundancy consultation that could affect up to 14 staff, including seven fee earners. (TheLawyer.com 13 Jan).
Up to seven lawyers are expected to lose their jobs in the real estate practice, which has been hit hard by the economic slump, with a further seven secretaries expected to be made redundant in corporate and real estate.
The news followed just a day after Clifford Chance, the world’s largest law firm by turnover, announced that 880 were in redundancy consultations (TheLawyer.com, 8 Jan 2009).
The Clifford Chance redundancies took The Lawyer’s Legal Job Watch table of UK 200 redundancies past 2000 for the first time (see table).
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Readers' comments (1)
Ageing cynic | 16-Jan-2009 7:31 pm
Selfish gits
It makes me sick to read all the comments from these po-faced partners about how they need to turf loyal employees out in the interest of prudent management.
No suggestion, of course, that they would sacrifice any of their £1m a year income to keep them in jobs. If they only sacrificed 10% (and let's face it, what's the practical diifference between an income of £900k and £1m, particlaularly after tax) they could save the jobs of 4 or 5 suppport staff.
I hope the greedy sods get their come-uppance!
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