RollOnFriday can exclusively reveal that Eversheds is planning to make its entire back office finance team redundant and shift the work to India.

Insiders say that some 60 jobs are likely to go in Birmingham, in what will be the firm's fifth redundancy round. What's more Eversheds is also looking at a joint venture with Accenture to replace other teams. One insider even suggested to RollOnFriday that Eversheds would also be outsourcing its "management team" - which, given its record in handling the downturn, sounds like an excellent idea.

Lee Ranson, the firm's Managing Partner, told RollOnFriday that "Eversheds is very focussed on the need to provide services that are cost-effective and of the highest quality to support our lawyers and clients. As part of this, Eversheds is currently reviewing options for delivering certain back-office financial and HR support operations. We are working in partnership with market-leading process improvement specialists Accenture to examine a number of options. No final decisions have been taken. If any decisions that potentially impact our people are made our first priority will be to communicate directly with our people".

    A dole queue yesterday 

With increasing client pressure to drive down fees, outsourcing is the new black for the legal sector. Many major law firms are looking into it - DLA Piper considered outsourcing up to 1,000 IT jobs last month, Freshfields confirmed last week that it would consider outsourcing some of its legal work to UK regional firms and US firm Fitzherbert announced yesterday that it would outsource its entire business to Bulgaria leaving only a single receptionist in New York who would hold all of the firm's profits on trust for the estate of its long-dead founder Edwin Fitzherbert II.

Expect more of this to happen as law firms rush to update their business models to reflect the new cost-conscious business environment , with more jobs on the line as a result...
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