Pinsent Masons is placing all of its UK secretaries on notice of redundancy.

The firm made the announcement internally on Thursday. Leaked to RollOnFriday, a source said the firm made the decision after reviewing the amount of administration work undertaken by PAs and lawyers. The source said 105 jobs are expected to be axed, with the majority in the London and Birmingham offices. 

According to RoF's source the firm intends expand its use of its centralised typing pool and its outsourced resource  in South Africa instead. It will also apparently recruit administration assistants to replace costlier legal secretaries, and cull PA team coordinator roles. The massacre would, said the source, be completed by the end of November. 

Pinsents is by no means the first firm to 'modernise' its secretarial support functions, with all the pain that entails. BLM pushed the button earlier this year (provoking fury in the comments section).

  Betty was more efficient than the old PAs right up until the moment she synced with Skynet. 

A spokeswoman for Pinsents said that the location and number of individuals impacted had not been finalised. She said, "Our vision is to be an international market leader in our global sectors, and to do that we need to ensure our people have first-class support and infrastructure". She said that over the past year Pinsent Masons had "invested significantly in technology and other resources" to achieve that aim, but that one of the consequences "is that our resourcing levels among PA staff and the needs of the business are no longer aligned". She said, "We will do everything possible to support those impacted during what we recognise is an unsettling time".
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