Business is business and, for the most part, the stream of announcements of law firm job cuts seen so far have been proportionate and hard to avoid. But it’s hard to see how the announcement today from Wragge & Co that it is consulting on redundancies of as many as 30 fee earners fit into that category. For a start, the cuts are very deep for a firm with 441 lawyers. Likewise, they come after a period in which Wragges achieved revenue growth of 11.5% while profits rose by 15.8%.
But the real issue is that getting into this position did not look inevitable for the firm. For years it has been a mystery why Wragges became so hell-bent on pinning its expansion plans on property, property and more property.
