Field Fisher lays off two lawyers at end of consultation

By Joshua Freedman

The firm said in November that it was in consultation with four lawyers - including two solicitors, one associate and one senior associate - of which three were in London and one in Manchester (25 November 2011).

However, the City firm has now confirmed that two of these - one in London and one in Manchester - survived the consultation round, while the other two were laid off.

FFW managing partner Matthew Lohn said in November: “The public regulatory market is changing rapidly, with pressure on the public sector resulting in far more work being brought in-house. We’re also seeing the work that does go out to tender becoming increasingly price sensitive.”

Separately, the firm has not found new roles for three solicitors employed on fixed-term contracts to work on a specific public-sector client account that had produced a backlog of fitness-to-practice work.

It also employed 10 paralegals on this same fixed-term basis, but of these, only two have not been offered roles elsewhere in the firm. It has now redeployed eight of these paralegals in total, up from four when the redundancy round emerged in November.