Slaughters Set to Lay Off Up to 28 Secretaries

Slaughter and May is set to lay off as many as 28 of its 165 secretaries in a rare redundancy round at the Magic Circle firm. Executive partner Graham White acknowledged the firm's lawyer-to-secretary ratio had not kept pace with technology's impact on the traditional secretarial role.

Alex Newman

Legal Week

2012-10-04 12:00:00 AM

Slaughter and May is set to lay off as many as 28 secretaries in a rare redundancy round at the Magic Circle firm.

Slaughters on Tuesday confirmed the redundancies of up to 28 full-time equivalent secretaries out of 165 currently employed at the firm's City base.

The firm said it is aiming to complete the process by the end of the calendar year.

"Regrettably, we have come to the conclusion that we will need to reduce our secretarial number," said executive partner Graham White.

The move, which was first reported on RollOnFriday, follows a review of the Slaughter's secretarial resource in London, with White acknowledging the firm had not changed its lawyer-to-secretary balance during a period in which the role of a secretary had changed considerably.

"Technological advances have meant that our lawyers have become more independent in the manner in which they manage documents," said White in a statement.

"The way we communicate with clients, and manage client matters, has also changed," he added.

Slaughters, which has 122 partners in London, Brussels, Hong Kong and Beijing, boasts one of the highest profits-per-equity-partner figures among U.K. law firms, standing at around 1.8 million pounds in 2011-12.

The announcement follows news of job cuts at a number of other top law firms. Last month Mayer Brown announced it is shedding up to 20 support and legal staff in a second round of redundancies this year, while in August, Pinsent Masons confirmed it would be laying off 47 staff in its support team following its merger with Scottish firm McGrigors.