Although last week was pretty quiet on the redundancy front (compared to recent announcements at any rate), there will be some nervous employees at US firm, Latham, and ‘big four’ Scots firm, Dundas, this week…

Latham announced on Friday that twelve to fifteen jobs are under review in its London office in a widespread cull announced by the firm. Latham will see a hefty total of 440 employees cut across its global network. That equates to approximately 12 per cent of its associates – 190 people, and 10 per cent of all paralegals and staff. In addition to the layoffs, Latham is deferring the start date for the class of 2009 to mid-December and it is offering all those in the incoming class the option to further defer start dates to October 2010. The firm will pay those deferring $75,000 (£53,000) – future trainees offered deferrals here might be swallowing hard at those figures (see below ).

Meanwhile, Dundas, one of top Scottish law firms has also announced that it is in discussions with approximately 25 fee earners and 25 support staff across the firm’s three offices in Edinburgh, London and Glasgow. A number of equity partners are thought to be amongst those in the firing line. This comes despite the firm posting a significant rise in turnover for the 2007-08 financial year of 23% with revenues up from £60.8m to £74.8m and PEP reaching £385,000.