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DLA Piper puts 251 in consultation across UK as firm mulls Glasgow closure

Good business decision or a cut too far? Acknowledge DP are not an income generating team. And they occupy lots of space across lots of offices that, in theory, could be utilised as fee-generating space or a cut in commercial rent. In theory, a great business decision. In practice,likely to be very different. As an ex-DLAer this looks to me like a drastic extension of previous piecemeal cost-cutting to support services, which started with the abolition of 24/7 DP units across various offices to skeleton staff overnight in Leeds/London. The effect was felt even then by the fee-earning staff (particularly those in depts other than corporate on evenings when completions were taking place), but was minimised by some truly amazing cross-office juggling by the DP co-ordinators. I suspect that was hailed a cost-cutting success despite the minor headaches it caused. One of the reasons DLA worked like a well oiled machine is that it invested in its support functions: IT, DP,training. DLA's DP techs are second to none; I hope that there are plenty of other firms waiting to get their hands on any that are made redundant - it would be an investment they wouldn't regret. The current climate may dictate that costs have to be reduced, but I fear that the sheer scale of the proposed redundancies in DP may be felt so acutely by the fee-earning population on the ground, that Mr Angel will achieve nothing more than putting some clear blue water between the decision makers at the top and the rest of the staff at the firm. Let's see what happens to attrition rates at their best performing offices. Agree with previous posts : London probably safe, not on profitability but just on the fact that the firm needs to have some sort of presence there. The posts saying Leeds will go don't know the firm at all:Mr Angel would have to be completely barking mad. Would only happen if the Leeds partners decided go it alone.

16-Nov-2012

9:52 pm