Hill Dickinson is placing up to 39 staff at risk of redundancy.

All the roles are in the counter fraud insurance teams of the firm's Liverpool, Manchester and London offices, with both support staff and fee-earners affected.

A spokeswoman for the firm said the consultation, which started on 14 May, has seen "approximately 30" people placed at risk. An inside source told RollOnFriday that the exact figure is 39. Staff may feel they're experiencing a bad case of deja vu. Last summer 40 of their former colleagues in the counter fraud team, 15 secretaries and 25 fee-earners, were placed in a redundancy consultation, and all lost their jobs. The source says staff morale "is at an all time low".

    HR, back for another bite

Hill Dicks says the move comes "following a period of considerable market change" and as "part of an operational restructure". Which is at least better than last year, when the firm said that, rather improbably, it had to make redundancies "following a 15% increase in instructions".

HD staff are not the only ones being hit. The legal services market may be seeing green shoots of recovery, but pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap commoditised sectors seem to be suffering. Several lawyers in the medical negligence team at Capsticks are set to lose their jobs, as exclusively revealed this week by RollOnFriday, and 80 staff are in the firing line at Plexus after it decided to outsource its high volume, low value work to South Africa.

A spokeswoman for Hill Dickinson said, "We appreciate this is difficult time for our colleagues and are providing support and assistance to those affected”.
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Comments

Anonymous 15 May 15 10:28

Can someone explain to me - what on earth is going on over there?

They have decent staff, work from loads of different / diverse sources and some presence in the industry.

How is it going wrong for them?

Roll On Friday 15 May 15 10:30

I feel for these people. This is a problem with the Defendant Insurance firms: Some of them love having a large Fraud department which they can show to their insurance clients and say "See! Look how cute we are!". The insurers are big on Fraud and Fraud savings, but the problem is that they define exaggeration as Fraud, often, while those of us dealing with the litigation can knock the exaggeration down without being a specialised "fraud" unit. Having a dedicated Fraud Casualty team is a non-starter. For Motor work, it's more realistic as you have your crash-4-cash, but the rates are still p1ss poor and, again, you're better just having a bunch of fee earners who deal with all kinds of claim, but are able to deal with Fraud as part of a general workload, rather than being a separate team. That's my view, anyway. So who'll be firing next? Keoghs?

Anonymous 15 May 15 10:45

Can someone explain to me - what on earth is going on over there?

They have decent staff, work from loads of different / diverse sources and some presence in the industry.

How is it going wrong for them?

Anonymous 16 May 15 00:45

Maybe move to the next big thing (bandwagon) for insurers, noise induced hearing loss?

Anonymous 18 May 15 12:30

This is why you have qualifications, to fall back on in difficult times. Losing a job is demoralising and can lead to problems such as loss of confidence, drinking too much, saying and doing things you might regret. Start looking for a job right away and negotiate a good leaving package if you can. It's old fashioned but you should always try to have a bit of money behind you, say six months salary for if things go the wrong way up.

Be prepared if you are on the hit list that your work colleagues may start ignoring you and your managers will leave you out of things. Don't embarrass yourself by working late, what would be the point. Do your job, go home and try to stay in control.

Anonymous 19 May 15 20:59

They've all but made their targets but there aren't many pay rises. Should think about that when they use admin assistants to do paralegal work, and charge paralegal rates for it.

Roll On Friday 21 May 15 13:41

To anonymous user @ 18/05/15 11.30am "This is why you have qualifications..." - I tend to agree, however some of those put on notice do not. HD's Counter Fraud team has always been keener to recruit qualified fee earners than other Fraud depts, but - without naming names - a couple in the team which came from SR left school at 16 and have been fee earning ever since. I feel sorry for them.

I've worked in 4 Counter Fraud depts but having been made redundant twice, I'm glad I at least had my LLB(Hons), LPC and some advocacy experience to fall back on. In the days of the RTA Portal, a lot of these Defendant/Fraud fee earners will find it tough finding the same salary on the Claimant side, if they manage to find a job in PI at all.

Anonymous 27 May 15 01:45

When are they going to realise the problem is the SMT and all the excuses not the fee earners and support staff unless you ride a bike you have no chance. No need to bring in new clients, just make more staff redundant as you keep doing year after year.

Anonymous 05 June 15 15:22

How do certain people sleep at night? Brand new cars and 6 figure plus plus packages with zero moral compass. in terms of "your" team and "your" people. Get printed bar codes on your head and scan in, scan out. The other post was right, don't work late, don't do extra. Think about you and your families and have plan B/C ready.

Anonymous 17 July 15 17:22

Offering support and assistance? right! They couldnt care less. I think what is happening is that the top knobs want more money in their pockets. Closing down profitable sections and making decent people redundant - and them treating them badly !!!!

Anonymous 20 July 15 11:30

Even more redundancies in the pipeline with more people leaving at the end of August.

Anonymous 21 July 15 16:10

The firm is clearly trimming staff to save money, including stupid things like buying in the cheapest tea bags and coffee, no plastic cups for water, the Cafe is serving the same baked potato everyday, the bins don't get emptied for three days now. I can see no other explanation other than the Firm is bulking up its profit and is heading for a merger, or the Firm will be sold.

I'm jumping ship, I don't know about the rest of you!