In our Redundancy Watch articles we have been keeping track of the rafts of lawyers set adrift in the last few months (from Cobbetts, Eversheds, Halliwells, Clifford Chance to name just a handful) but what else is in store for lawyers at the moment? Aside from redundancies at firms there are plenty of other implications of course.

At risk of stating the obvious, in-house banking lawyers have expressed concern that the prolonged economic turmoil will lead to further in-house job cuts. Citigroup’s redundancy announcement has sent shivers through the professional services industries. Headcount will be reduced by nearly 20% in total! Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, also look set to wield the axe, chopping 3,600 and 3,300 jobs respectively.

In addition, Lloyds TSB has confirmed there will be substantial job losses due to its integration with HBOS while Royal Bank of Scotland this month announced plans to cut 3,000 jobs. Nomura trimmed its legal team in July following wider cuts and it is understood that similar legal cuts occurred following banker redundancies at Barclays Capital during the same month.

The BBC quotes one anonymous unfortunate in the City who described the nature of their parting:

“A security guard escorts you to your desk and you pick your belongings, without being able to say goodbye to anyone. You are escorted out of the building, where you surrender your pass and that is pretty much it.”

Tough love…

Meanwhile, lawyers that get to keep their jobs are facing other pressures. JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are among a host of leading banks attempting to slash fee agreements with panel firms. Lloyds TSB and Deutsche Bank are also understood to be in discussions with legal advisers with fees thought to be prominent on the agenda.

And following our recent article on the death of the billable hour , some of you might be interested to learn that ITV has become one of the first major British companies to entirely phase out the billable hour as it unveils its new panel of legal advisers. ITV’s advisers have been reduced from almost 50 to nine , with each firm agreeing to use alterative billing methods.

And, looking at the bigger picture, in a recent article from The Greatest American Lawyer , it has been suggested that the very model of the pyramid structure in large law firms could be under threat…

“Essentially, big law operates on the fundamental premise of ever-increasing billable hours.  In order to support the salaries at the top, they must continually add increasing number of associates at the bottom.  Graphically, the model appears as a pyramid where each year a new base is added which includes more associates than the year before.

As the vast majority of big law suffers under this tough economic environment, the pyramid model is suffering.  Not only are they failing to add increasing numbers of associates at the bottom of the pyramid, but also big law is putting on hiring freezes and terminating large numbers of lawyers and staff.” Click to read the full thread.

Finally top-earning City partners look set to see their tax bills rise by around £50,000 as a result of measures detailed in Monday’s pre-budget report. The new 45% higher tax rate for earnings above £150,000, combined with the 0.5% increase in national insurance planned from April 2011, means a partner earning £1m a year will pay around £49,600 each year in additional tax. At the lower end of PEP the increase equates to around £35,000 extra tax for those with salaries of £750,000, and an extra £22,000 for those on £500,000.

Tighten your belts folks.