CMS Cameron McKenna, Nabarro and Olswang are to cut 300 UK secretarial and support staff roles between them prior to the merger of the three firms in May.
Olswang had the smallest non fee-earning staff headcount at 263. Nabarro has 313 staff and CMS has 269 staff in the UK out of 1,730 staff globally. The latter firm outsourced its entire back office function to Integreon in 2010, before scaling that deal back in 2013.
In a statement, CMS said: “We can confirm that the consultation process for our business services and secretarial teams has now concluded. Of the 950 support staff across our three firms including outsourced service providers, 650 staff have been offered roles in the new firm. Of those leaving the majority have chosen to take voluntary redundancy and we have honoured all requests regardless of whether there was a role or not.”
Nabarro and Olswang agreed to merge with CMS last October. CMS will take the bulk of the leadership roles in the new firm: just one Nabarro and one Olswang partner will lead a practice area single-handedly, with Nabarro senior partner Ciaran Carvalho set to lead the global real estate group and Olswang’s Iain Stanisfield leading the UK commercial practice.
CMS is significantly investing in technology ahead of the merger, It will roll out machine learning and data visualisation technology Brainspace to “accelerate data analysis and review in litigation, arbitration and investigations”.
