It was claimed this week that Freshfields is considering transfering up to 800 jobs to Manchester.

News of Freshfields' potential new northern hub broke last month, but the potential scale of the move dwarfs similar projects at other big firms. A&O moved 180 jobs to Belfast in 2011. Ashurst put 350 jobs at risk when it announced its Glasgow oupost (in the end around 110 were lost).

Legal Business reported that Freshfields had originally planned to transfer 1,000 non-legal jobs, but had scaled this figure back after partners had cold feet about doing over their staff in such industrial quantities. The project is still under consultation - it may never happen. But if it goes ahead departments that are likely to be hit will include billing, IT, marketing and design. Staff that are unable or unwilling to move will find themselves out of a job.

  Will Lawes leading his billing team to Manchester - how it might look

Clearly there'll be a significant cost saving in having hundreds of staff on Manchester rather than London salaries and working out of offices in Salford rather than Fleet Street. But Freshfields has long prided itself as being the only major City institution in any sector that has never had a round of redundancies. The firm will have to save an awful lot of cash to compensate for the loss of that proud record.

A spokeswoman for the firm said that the figure of 800 was incorrect, and that she couldn't provide the correct ones as they were still in consultation. Fair enough. In a statement the firm said "we are devising a programme of change and enhancements to our global support infrastructure so that we can build on our tradition of providing an outstanding service to our clients,  wherever they are in the world, in an ever evolving market and technological environment. It’s a genuine business transformation  project, deploying new technology and new ways of working so that we can continue, as we have done over many years, constantly to improve the way we support our clients and our business  around the world.

"We are a people business and value our reputation as an employer very highly. We are fully committed to treating all our people with respect and fairly and sensitively throughout this transformational period and beyond
."

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Comments

Anonymous 13 March 15 07:34

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of this, please can firms stop talking about 'relocation' of jobs, as if people who have lived and worked in London for 20 years, with kids in school here, with family, friends, spouses here, are suddenly going to up sticks and move to Manchester because their job 'has moved there'.

Basically it's the sack for everyone in London affected by these changes. Does Freshfields as a private enterprise have the right to do this? Of course. But please be honest about the outcome. Don't hide behind weak euphemisms and HR lingo to replace the reality that 'you're fired because you cost too much'.

Anonymous 13 March 15 08:05

This isn't going to 'improve' anything, apart from the partners' bank balances and the Manchester job market. It's nothing more than pure avarice and can't be justified under any other basis. Absolutely shite way for a decent firm to behave.

Anonymous 13 March 15 10:09

erm, so the dozens of stealth redundancies during the financial crisis don't count? I guess that should be "the only major City institution in any sector that has never had an OFFICIAL round of redundancies."

At least the other firms had the guts to be upfront about it at the time.

Anonymous 13 March 15 10:49

This is a crying shame. One of the things that made Freshfields special was the scale of the London office. A lot of the fun things that happen in that place are driven by its non lawyers. I have always thought of Freshfields as one of the few places that seemed to really take care of its people. Forcibly "relocating" hundreds of people hundreds of miles, leaving an office in which there are really only lawyers with no time to do anything except client work seems like such a negative move, and all for the sake of partner profits (and let's not pretend it's about helping clients).

Roll On Friday 13 March 15 15:13

up to 800 jobs - that's a hell of a lot. I am somewhat surprised, it is often better to have feet on the ground rather than sectioned off somewhere. Feeling sorry for those who realistically cannot relocate though.

I would suspect a lot of firms are relocating staff to "cheaper" areas of the country. The firm I work for is doing it in dribs and drabs as and when support staff leave, they are replaced but in a cheaper location.

Anonymous 13 March 15 17:36

At what point will these law firms realise that they have enough money coming in to share around all of their staff and still run a long term and profitable business? They're not companies driven by their share holders who just want a quick ROI but are the blueprint for the kind of companies that can be true partnerships and look after all staff with shared profits at all levels.

The only reason I can think of is with the greed of the best new young lawyers drives them to the biggest payers. Those that keep the profits within the traditional partnership will obviously be their choice - why share profits with the plebs?

Anonymous 13 March 15 18:48

As 10.09 said. Any firm anywhere that claims it doesn't make redundancies is lying and covering up the truly disgusting way they treat staff to make them leave. Its not the badge of a good firm it's the mark of arrogant ladyparts more concerned with their image than the damage done to employees.

Anonymous 13 March 15 23:29

The only way Freshfields will manage to remain one of the pre-eminent law firms in the city is to continue to attract the best legal talent. To do this it needs to ensure, among other things, that its partners and other lawyers are among the most handsomely compensated in the market. And to accomplish this Freshfields must cut costs in other areas. So it is no doubt looking at a range of options, including the relocation of certain back-office services to cheaper locations. Freshfields' competitors are looking to do similar things and it is vital for Freshfields not to fall behind any of them in any cost cutting (see the point about attracting the best legal talent).

Now many seem to think that Freshfields should not be so "avaricious", "shite", "greedy" etc. and should instead "share its profits" more widely among its employees. Perhaps partners and other lawyers should be paid less so that back-office staff can remain in London (even while Freshfields' rivals relocate their support functions to lower cost areas and use the resulting savings to pay their lawyers more and/or charge their clients less)? Now, if it can be shown that notwithstanding Freshfields maintaining a more expensive back office in London, it can still effectively compete with its rivals not so encumbered (because having its more expensive back office close to hand gives it an edge over those rivals with back offices in other localities), then that is obviously a valid reason to keep the back-office in London. But keeping the back-office in London simply to avoid screwing over expensive back-office based London staff and to avoid being seen as greedy is a bad way to run a business, even though you might receive emotional plaudits from those who have no stake in your ongoing profitability and position in the market.

Sure it's Darwinian and it's not nice, but no one has a job for life anymore. If I was a Freshfields back-office employee, I would look at my skill set, look at what the market is paying for such skills in London and take note of any trends to relocate the functions who provide my services to lower cost areas. I would not sit back, stick my head in the sand and think that my employer has a social or emotional obligation to keep on paying me until I retire even though my function is being provided far more cheaply to the same if not higher standard from somewhere else.

Anonymous 14 March 15 00:20

It's Manchester, it's a good place, get over it. Maybe people will realise the quality of life is actually Better.

Anonymous 14 March 15 08:48

In 2010 didn't Freshfields outsource a lot of library, BD and KM functions to Evalueserve? What do you call what happened to the staff whose jobs were outsourced if not redundancy, or did they keep everyone on and just transfer their employment under TUPE? I'm pretty sure people were made redundant then.

Anonymous 14 March 15 10:32

Anon 23:29 - not sure how you can argue that Freshfields is simply keeping up with the Joneses when it's moving 4/5x as many jobs as its nearest competitors.

Anonymous 14 March 15 11:12

It makes me laugh how Freshfields have "never made redundancies". I was there in 2007 when instead of making lawyers redundant like the other firms, they "performanced managed" people out - people who had never had any previous performance issued. Redundancy by a different name in my book.

Anonymous 14 March 15 14:23

Seems everyone at Freshfields who isn't a partner gets royally shafted. The trainees, NQ's and associates all get paid less than they would at American firms (for NQ's/associates by a ridiculous degree) with much smaller bonuses for doing exactly the same job. Large numbers of the support staff are effectively being forced out to save a few quid. Sounds like a nice place to work.

Anonymous 14 March 15 23:14

Anon 10:32: "Anon 23:29 - not sure how you can argue that Freshfields is simply keeping up with the Joneses when it's moving 4/5x as many jobs as its nearest competitors."

Okay, so Freshfields is moving ahead of its nearest competitors in this regard. Presumably it has calculated that the 4/5x back-office functions it is moving can continue to be provided to the same levels from Manchester (or wherever) with significant cost savings. If this is correct, then Freshfields pulls ahead of its rivals and they will quickly respond by moving their equivalent service functions to lower cost areas. If this is not correct and back-office services are adversely affected by the relocation causing a negative impact on the front-office, then Freshfields will have the very costly task of relocating the relevant back-office services back to Fleet Street.

Anon 14:53: "Seems everyone at Freshfields who isn't a partner gets royally shafted. [...] Sounds like a nice place to work."

And yet people continue to apply to work at Freshfields in their hundreds (or thousands?)! No one gets "royally shafted" - they get paid extremely good salaries (even if not the best in the city) which allow them (if they don't make partner) to go on to other extremely well paid jobs in other firms and businesses (including in those US London based firms which pay the best salaries). No one is holding a gun to anyone's head at Freshfields and forcing them to work extremely punishing hours for slightly less than someone would get in a US London based firm - you are free to leave at any time and many do. You are also free to leave if you think Freshfields is not treating its back-office staff with sufficient empathy. Now if the fact Freshfields pays less and is, according to many in these comments, less than cavalier in the way that it treats its employees, this may have an impact on the quality of people the firm attracts and it may suffer as a consequence (e.g. prospective trainee law students avoiding the Freshfields stands at Uni-open days because of the beastly behaviour of Freshfields they have read about on RoF and other websites). But this does not seem to be the case. So it is a no-brainer if you are in Freshfields management to obtain your back-office services as cheaply as possible and to keep to minimum the salaries paid to trainees and associates, provided such back-office services continue to be high quality and you continue to attract the best people for training contracts and associate jobs.

Anonymous 15 March 15 10:09

I have worked in very big firms before now, I've never worked for Freshfields. The politics between the lawyers is hugely disheartening. The politics of the interactions is diluted by having non fee earning staff about the place. People whose sole desire is not to get to earning 500k plus.

If you remove these normal people from the office then the concentration of clever, motivated people will increase as will the politics and backbiting.

However, I'm sure the Manchester office will be a truly great place to work.


Anonymous 16 March 15 09:30

Never made redundancies is a lie. In 2007/2008 there was a redundancy programme of support staff. The term redundancy and the legal requirements for consultation etc were definitely used.

Anonymous 17 March 15 17:00

"If I was a Freshfields back-office employee, I would look at my skill set, look at what the market is paying for such skills in London and take note of any trends to relocate the functions who provide my services to lower cost areas. I would not sit back, stick my head in the sand and think that my employer has a social or emotional obligation to keep on paying me until I retire even though my function is being provided far more cheaply to the same if not higher standard from somewhere else."

Would you? This is very easy to say. What you are implying is that these 800 people - some of whom may have worked at the firm for years - are clueless resource-bots who don't deserve any loyalty from the firm (accepting that you are not running a charity - I say "you" as I assume you are someone involved with the plans) and that they should just count themselves lucky to have Freshfields on their CV.

Forget "emotional plaudits" - what you stand to lose in terms of the firm's culture is greater than the short-term profitability gains you are expecting. Back office staff aren't just an encumbrance! They organize and facilitate many of the things that the lawyers enjoy in the London office, most of which will presumably cease now. That will have a greater effect on your ability to attract top legal talent than you might expect.

Anonymous 18 March 15 18:21

Of course with Freshfields' cost base being lower clients will inevitably demand a corresponding reduction in fees. It's a naïve lawyer who imagines clients under their own cost-cutting pressures will be prepared to subsidise excess profits for City fatcats when they know the service no longer costs the provider what it used to.

If I was a Freshfields lawyer, I would look at my skill set, look at what the market is paying for such skills in the North and take note of any trends to relocate the functions who provide my services to lower cost areas. I would not sit back, stick my head in the sand and think that my employer has a social or emotional obligation to keep on paying me until I retire even though my function is being provided far more cheaply to the same if not higher standard from somewhere else

Anonymous 18 March 15 21:59

Responding to the comment at 18:21 - I am not sure that inevitable client pressure to reduce costs is the motivation for this move.

When I was there Freshfields wasn't interested in negotiating with clients on professional fees. They don't want to act for every client in the City, just those with big ticket corporate and litigation work. That's part of the reason why you saw partner culls and exits, particular in "non-core" teams like real property and intellectual property and some finance teams - cutting the fat and make the firm a leaner, meaner corporate/ligation workhorse.

I see this as part of an overall project to reduce overheads and ensure the firm has exactly the right number of non-fee earning staff required to ensure the firm can service high-end corporate and litigation work with reduced staff costs and other overheads (thus protecting profits, and ensuring a decent bonus pool is there to incentive partners and associates). That project has also seen the restacking of buildings, reorganising of departments and sector teams and they have been through a highly publicised associate salary/bonus restructure already.

I know what my friends get paid in the North - it was less than 1/3 of what I got paid in London for comparable hours work in a corporate team at Freshfields. Maybe I was just one of the "lucky" ones.

Looks like they are holding fire for now anways: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/business/professionals/freshfields-delay-final-decision-manchester-8870887