While its merger driven expansion has made Dentons a global giant, integration across the firm’s US business has led to 60 job losses across 22 offices.
Following the combination of McKenna Long & Aldridge and Dentons US in 2015, the firm has moved to consolidate business services and support teams.
The firm informed the affected staff last Monday, according to Above the Law. A spokesperson for Dentons confirmed the layoffs.
The merger with McKenna Long saw Dentons integrate several offices in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington DC.
Following the US merger, Dentons has entered combinations in China, Australia, Central America and Singapore in the last two years alone.
The US job cuts are not the first from Dentons in recent months. Last year, Dentons European and UK arms launched a new joint back office function in Warsaw with around 70 people, leading to around 25 UK roles being cut back.
A statement from Dentons said: ‘As part of regular business operations, Dentons has undertaken a review of its US internal operations. The legal sector is rapidly evolving, and just like our clients it is important that we constantly explore ways to ensure our business is aligned to the needs of our partners and clients to demonstrate continued value.
‘Having completed one full year post merger in the US, we now have a complete set of data on our combined operations, as well as continued integration of our US and global support teams. In many US locations, we have concluded moving from two offices to one, and consolidated many systems, among other integration.
‘As a result, earlier this week we implemented a realignment of our business services teams. Regrettably, this resulted in notifications of an overall reduction of approximately 60 positions in business services across our 22 US offices. This process is complete.’
matthew.field@legalease.co.uk
Read more in: ‘The Pitch – A new kind of global law firm emerges but can Dentons live up to the hype?’
