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Exclusive: Redundancies at Slaughter and May

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Laura @ RoF

02 October 2012 11:25

RollOnFriday has just heard that secretaries at Slaughter and May have been informed that there is to be a large swathe of redundancies. Out of a total of 165 secretaries across the London office, 28 full-time roles are set to disappear.

According to the firm it's not a case of penny pinching, but rather technological advances have allowed lawyers to become much more independent and have less need for secretarial services.

A lawyer making the most of technological advances yesterday

Slaughters aims to have finished the redundancy process by 31 December 2012. So it'll be a less than happy festive period for many of the firm's secretaries.

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anonymous user 03/10/2012 15:28 Rate it -7 Report as offensive Having secretaries in 2012 is about as relevant as having a chauffeur ! Dragon Dictate v.12 plus some keyboard skills and a decent precedent bank deals with more correspondence and documentation perfectly comfortably And the effect on overheads and hence profitability is fairly self evident Amazing it has taken them so long to wake up to the opportunity to cut costs
anonymous user 03/10/2012 15:42 Rate it 0 Report as offensive In my firm I have been told by some US associates (quite senior) that they have NEVER had a secretary, or the use of one. All the functions are carried out by others who do nothing but the one of few functions allocated to them. This works in a larger office/firm, but in smaller offices multitaskers like secretaries are invaluable. Technology just means one traditional task - typing - is a much smaller part of what they do. Oh, and clients pay £300 hourly for typing, photocopying, filing, etc.

anonymous user
03/10/2012 15:28

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-7

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Having secretaries in 2012 is about as relevant as having a chauffeur !

Dragon Dictate v.12 plus some keyboard skills and a decent precedent bank deals with more correspondence and documentation perfectly comfortably

And the effect on overheads and hence profitability is fairly self evident

Amazing it has taken them so long to wake up to the opportunity to cut costs

anonymous user
03/10/2012 15:42

Rate it

Report as offensive

In my firm I have been told by some US associates (quite senior) that they have NEVER had a secretary, or the use of one. All the functions are carried out by others who do nothing but the one of few functions allocated to them. This works in a larger office/firm, but in smaller offices multitaskers like secretaries are invaluable. Technology just means one traditional task - typing - is a much smaller part of what they do. Oh, and clients pay £300 hourly for typing, photocopying, filing, etc.