More redundancies hit the legal sector this week…

DLA Piper has started its second redundancy consultation in just three months. There will be 30 lawyers and 110 support staff in the line up. The firm carried out a consultation in December last year, in which 15 fee earners and 16 support staff were axed. All eight of the firm’s UK offices will be vulnerarble but partners and trainees will not be included. However, it is understood that, the firm is inviting …

Final reminder in support of Eleanor Mhizha’s charitable fundraiser at Alibi, Shoe Lane 7.30pm – 10pm.

Greetings to all of you at Solicitr

I am currently a paralegal at Ashurst and I am due to start training at Nabarro in September. As this summer will be my last chance to travel for a long time, I have decided to do some voluntary work in Tanzania. I have found the perfect project through Hostel Hoff, an organisation which focuses on independent …

Where there’s fame there’s a claim…

The reaction of the Magic Circle firms to the downturn seems to be kicking up a stink whatever strategy they pursue. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer told staff yesterday (9 February) that salaries for associates will be kept at 2008 levels. The move makes it the first UK law firm to break assistant lockstep and means that its associates will not progress through to the next pay band. Newly-qualified lawyers will also remain on the same salary after one-year PQE instead …

You may have noticed that we have finally managed to update our video strips. We intend to do this more often in future to ensure high standards are maintained for your viewing pleasure!

We particularly wanted to draw your attention to the "Bitter Lawyer – Living the Dream" series from which satires one chap’s progression in BigLaw. We intend to roll it out over the coming weeks and months as we found it rather amusing and it has proved very popular …

Redundancies have been announced thick and fast recently (have a look at this layoff tracker for firms or this one for general misery if you feel the need). Alongside these announcements firms have been at pains to emphasise their reasoning behind such moves. Law firms cite declining demand for legal services, decreased fees for the work remaining and a lack of usual attrition as reasons for axeing associates. Whilst the need to carry out some restructuring in a recession …

Despite a solid first-half 08/09 performance from Lovells, the top 10 City firm has launched a redundancy consultation that could see up to 94 London staff lose their jobs (the firm recorded a 15% increase in turnover in its last results).

Eighteen fee earners and six professional support lawyers are in the firing line with the remaining cuts coming from the firm’s support staff – 43 support staff and 27 legal and float PAs also face the chop. However, it …

As the social networking goliath continues to spread its way across the planet, the phenomenon has created difficult issues for businesses and a whole new set of professional etiquette dilemmas for individuals.

As many will know from experience, not all businesses have taken to Facebook. Many firms banned access altogether over fears that staff were wasting time on the site when they should have been working. As far back as 2007 companies were warning employees that accessing the site during …

Its been a chilly week for most in the UK but at least the snow brings a sense of fun to what would otherwise be a just another inconvenience to working life. Those fortunate enough to be able to work from home were encouraged to do so but a substantial number of our readers just enjoyed a cheeky day off – the really lucky ones got more than one!

The unexpected but timely break might help with those rising …

We get quite a lot of these but this one caused a chuckle here at Solicitr. It’s office friendly but keep watching right to the end or you might miss it…

The woes of the UK BigLaw may seem distant to solicitors in smaller firms and across the regions but the Magic Cirlce does seem to be monopolising the headlines at the moment. Whilst the splurge of negative news continues throughout the profession and lawyers across the country brace themselves with each swing of the axe, it is difficult to ignore what happens at the top of the tree.

Clifford Chance, the first of the MC firms to anounce large scale …

Feeling stressed at the moment? There are plenty of reasons why you might be. The job of a lawyer is stressful at the best of times with billing targets, deadlines and office politics to juggle. Throw the global economic downturn and the threat of redundancy into the mix and what felt like the tremmor of nerves in the pit of your stomach may have turned into a fully fledged feeling of imploding solicitor syndrome (we made that up but …

In the battle between the law schools to sign up firms to exclusive deals, BPP Law School has managed to bag City law firm Travers Smith. According to The Lawyer it will be the sole provider of the Legal Practice Course to all of the firm’s future trainee solicitors. Travers will send all its trainees to BPP’s Holborn, London, branch and students will study an LPC tailor-made especially for the firm. Suits you sir.

Continuing the student theme, one wannabe …

Following the recent redundancy moves at the London offices of Clifford Chance and Linklaters, lots of attention has been focused on UK Biglaw. There has been plenty of speculation about A&O and Freshfields in the wake of these announcements but we are yet to see something material.

In the meantime the press has been considering what Linklater’s New World strategy really means. Aside from the fallout of making 120 City lawyers and 150 business support staff leave, the focus has …

If you scour the news at on any given day there is often a well known figure knocking around who is in need of a lawyer to help them out of a legal scrape. Here are a couple that have cropped up recently…

Michael Jackson must be a favorite with lawyers given the amount of his fortune he has spent on them over the years. He seems to use lawyers like most people use hot water.

Having recently moved back to …

Some of you will remember last week’s post promoting this night in support of Eleanor Mhizha’s charitable fundraiser . If you did not see it the first time or you needed a reminder, see below. Also, we have received some revised ticket information from Eleanor for those of you who did not wish to register with the ticket sellers. The revised details can be found in bold at the end of this post but the new link is:

www.cocktailmixingsinglesparty.wordpress.com …

Following the recent political drive to create social mobility in the professions , new research has now found that lawyers are from more privileged backgrounds than those working in other professional jobs.

The Lawyer concluded that the legal profession is even more elitist than other professions and the gap has widened in the last decade after comparing the average monthly family income for lawyers born in 1958 with those born in 1970.

The research was conducted for The Lawyer by the …

After the controversey surrounding A&O’s international finance and projects associate Deidre Dare and her book Expat: A Weekly Serialized Novel About Living in Moscow , it seems as if the firm has had enough. According to The Lawyer Deidre Dare’s employment was terminated on Friday, several weeks after the firm stopped her from publishing further instalments of Expat. In a statement, a spokesman for the firm said:

"Following our normal disciplinary process, we found that Ms Dare’s behaviour – in …

It wasn’t in time for a white Christmas but lots of lawyers across the country were stranded at home yesterday as snowfall hit large swathes of the country.

Solicitr understands from its (very) relaible sources that pubs across London and elsewhere were packed to the rafters as would-be commuters celebrated the extended weekend with a pint or two.

Many law firms experienced difficulties, with a large number of lawyers and support staff unable to travel into work. Although the day off …