Redundancies in the City?

Aside from Dechert have they started?- and if so what practice areas / firms are doing em?- and where are the safest harbours?

Not sure what safest practice area is but generally you want to be in a balanced, sensibly geared team in a sector which can weather market forces (to the extent that is possible)

Loads of junior lawyers were poached from my old shop at the height of the madness in 2021 to join PE teams at US firms.

Haven’t done a systematic stalking recently, but the ones I know best still seem to be employed, and they would be first in the firing line.

Most mid market firms didn't over extended during the 21/22 boom so should be fine 

Might slow down recruitment but that's about it 

Have a look around you, if the pipeline is strong and your team is sensibly constructed then there is nothing to worry about 

If you have like 25 senior non partners, no work and no pipeline.....well that's a bit different 

There is a lot of dross to be cut so I doubt anyone that stayed put from pre-March 2020 is in danger. The ones in danger are hopeless foreign qualifieds, non-MC to US, provincial to City and NQed out of desperation since then. 

 

The two year thing is really sh1tty. 

Not aware of anyone other then Dechert being decent enough to be upfront about it but 'performance management' is definitely a focus lots of places.

That's ominous Jamie. If not outy can you roughly ID teams/ areas where its happening? Also are they being open like dechert? Or pretending it's performance?

saying it’s performance when the wider teams are quiet, according to a mate in HR in a City firm (not one of the above)

many firms hired heavily during the lockdown boom and are now just not as profitable 

I mean they’re still profitable but it’s a question of associates billing 2-3 times salary not 5-6 times salary - so year on year profits will fall - hence need for “action” to maintain partner drawings and PEP as much as possible but obviously without trimming partners because that would be absurd