Eversheds announces up to 117 further redundancies
11 September 2009
The full extent of Eversheds' woes was made clear yesterday when it achieved the dubious distinction of being the only firm to announce four separate rounds of redundancies.

It's not just a handful of staff either - up to 95 secretaries and 22 real estate lawyers are at risk. As ever, they will be royally fisted by Eversheds who insist on paying just the statutory minimum. Viable alternative to the Magic Circle, our orange arse...

A spokeswoman for the firm tried to justify this dismal display of tight-arsedness by saying "our approach to redundancy packages has remained consistent ". Oh right, so it's fine to keep doing the staff over, because they always do them over equally. Lee Ranson, the firm's Managing Partner, at least had the grace to accept that this might be a mistake. "We made the decision in our first redundancy programme to give a certain level of compensation. With hindsight, there are arguments to suggest that we could have been more generous, however having made that decision we have taken the view that it would be wrong to offer different arrangements in other redundancy programmes."

Eversheds' last surviving real estate lawyer

The announcement comes at a time when many firms are reporting an increase in deal activity, and some are even starting to recruit, so it's unclear why Eversheds is still in quite such a mess. What seems clear however is that this disasterous record means the firm will struggle either to retain or attract any halfway decent staff once the upturn comes.

If one redundancy programme is unfortunate and two look like carelessness, then how can four be explained away as anything other than complete incompetence?