Norton Rose and Dentons follow suit as offshoring takes flight
DLA Piper is to cut 200 business support jobs in the UK in a move that will see the firm make one of the largest law firm redundancies since the aftermath of the financial crisis. The restructuring comes as other Legal Business 100 firms, including Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF) and Dentons, decided last month to also cut back-office jobs.
Nearly a fifth of UK business support roles at DLA will be cut, with IT, finance, human resources, marketing, business development and secretarial staff affected by the cull. The move will see DLA, which is targeting 5% profit growth each year, automate huge swathes of jobs and shift roles to low-wage economy Poland.
The changes follow a two-year review of operations, run by chief operating officer Andrew Darwin, and a pilot of a global shared services centre in Warsaw. The firm has promised to consult with staff over the redundancies, with 300 roles under scrutiny, and has told employees that jobs will not be made redundant until October at the earliest. The consultation began on 31 May and will be completed by the end of July.
‘Some of this is overdue for an overhaul and, quite frankly, for automation.’
Andrew Darwin, DLA Piper
All of DLA’s seven UK offices – in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield – will be affected, but its Yorkshire heartlands are set to be hit hardest with around 80 jobs in Leeds and Sheffield at risk. Around 55 roles will also be made redundant in London.
Darwin said: ‘Let’s move on from the history to the future and adopt a DLA Piper way of doing things. Some of this is overdue for an overhaul and, quite frankly, for automation. Rather than doing the same thing in multiple ways, we’re going to do things in one way and, where a process can be automated, we’ll be automating it.’
The move comes three years after DLA’s last UK redundancy round, when around 250 staff were laid off in a move that also saw the firm close its Glasgow office. Also announced last month, NRF will lose 170 global business support roles, including 60 in London, while Dentons is set to cut 60 jobs in order to move operations to lower-wage economies.
tom.moore@legalease.co.uk