Hogan Lovells is laying off dozens of support staff as part of a restructuring. The redundancy process, announced internally today, will affect 78 business services roles and 12 legal support roles, all in the London office. The jobs are expected to be transferred from London to the firm's low cost offices in either Birmingham or Johannesburg, or outsourced entirely.
Staff in London were told that support staff in the US are going to be affected, too, and will be told when they go into work today. The difference is that the US redundancies will be structured as voluntary retirements.
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A voluntary retirement yesterday |
Last week RollOnFriday revealed that Pinsent Masons is laying off over 100 support staff as a part of a similar rationalisation.
A HogLove spokeswoman said, “The drivers behind our VERP* program are two-fold. First, it is in response to requests we have had from a number of business services members to undertake early retirement and offers our people enhanced terms. Second, it enables us to look again at our business services roles and where we deliver those services from. Together they give us an opportunity to accelerate how we deliver our business services operations in the U.S. and globally, making sure they are aligned to the future needs of our firm”.
Read more on Friday.
*That's Voluntary Early Retirement Programme, by the way, not Very Endangered Role Pacification or a new STI.
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[i]A HogLove spokeswoman said, “The drivers behind our VERP* program are two-fold. First, it is [b]to make more money for the partners. Second, it enable us to make even more money for the partners."[/b]
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Partner non-performers, too many support staff, poor IT. The writing is on the wall for a lot of law firms who refuse to change. Many more will fail over the next 5 years.
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