Slater and Gordon will axe four offices in the UK.

The shrinking firm has told staff that it will close offices in Chester, Wrexham and Milton Keynes. It will also shut a fourth base in Preston when the lease expires next summer. The closures will leave ten offices in the UK. An S&G spokesman told RollOnFriday that the firm was consolidating a number of the smaller offices into its larger regional hubs. He added that the firm would "work closely with the colleagues impacted" and "where possible" move them to the larger offices.

The cull follows the firm's recent announcement that the UK arm would be cut off from the Australian business. S&G's approach to slim down and streamline is a drastic u-turn from when it launched in the UK in 2012 and tried to expand rapidly. However, its acquisition of Quindell's legal division in 2015 was disastrous and has been blamed for the firm's failure. S&G recorded a AUD1 billion loss in the financial year 2015/16 and a loss of AUD546m in the financial year 2016/17. Its shares were suspended last year. In July this year, the firm agreed in principle to a AUD36.5 million settlement payment to its own disgruntled shareholders.

  Management handed out gifts with subtle hints as to who would be kept on  

An S&G associate told RollOnFriday that the firm has "done a full 180 turn from the initial 'Costa coffee' strategy of having an office on every high street and is now shutting offices left, right and centre". He added "nobody in my department of 120 got a pay rise this year, regardless of individual performance."
 
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Comments

Anonymous 08 December 17 14:43

Slater & Gordon was a good firm until they bought all that Quindell rubbish. I think a distinction should be made between the old Slater & G / Fentons where the lawyers all know what they are doing and the crap they bought, where you may s well instruct a monkey hurling turds from a tree.

Anonymous 08 December 17 14:49

Again, they were able to completely avoid mentioning the fact they shut the Aldershot office back in October...

Anonymous 08 December 17 18:47

S&G is a joke and as mentioned by another commenter, has been a joke ever since they bought Quindells. I mean come on, they willingly bought a company deeply embezzled in fraud and kept on many of the higher ranking staff to run S&G. How stupid can you be. From what I have seen/experienced these people should never have gotten to the level they currently hold and clearly can't separate their own feelings from their roles. Blatant favouritism is rampant in certain departments. Not to mention other very high level persons making very inconsiderate comments on the company Yammer.

Anonymous 14 December 17 10:10

Anonymous 14:43 - I think a distinction lauding Fentons alone is unfortunate. There were quality lawyers in all those firms consumed, minus Quindell of course. You mistakenly label the "Old S&G" lot also; they were RJW...

Anonymous 15 December 17 13:59

WSW was a highly regarded firm listed in many areas in Chambers and Legal500. S&G have now closed or are closing all four of their offices. It was profitable while S&G left it alone up to June 2016. Once they brought it over to Mattersphere got rid of the old partners and most of the support staff turnover/profit fell off a cliff.