43 solicitors axed or at risk at Trowers & Hamlins

_{As Real Estate lawyers, they appreciated the innovative design from their office straight to the exit}

Trowers & Hamlins has launched a redundancy consultation with 25 lawyers in its Real Estate team, following a recent cull just last month.

The firm axed 18 lawyers in Real Estate (including six partners) in October, bringing the running total to 43 jobs having been cut, or at risk, within the same practice area.

A Trowers & Hamlins spokesperson, commenting on the latest redundancy round, told RollOnFriday:"In order to best align our real estate team to changing client requirements, and in light of a continued slowdown in market conditions, it has become necessary for the firm to enter into a formal redundancy consultation with our real estate department in the UK."

"We anticipate that the number of roles affected will be around 25 across our 4 UK offices," the spokesperson added. "As ever, we are deeply committed to the wellbeing of our colleagues and this move has not been taken lightly. We are working to keep the number of those ultimately affected as low as possible whilst also protecting the longer-term strength of the firm".

With a dip in the Real Estate market, it remains to be seen if other firms with big property departments, also have a cull.

In other news in the sector, four partners in Irwin Mitchell's Birmingham Real Estate and Corporate team are jumping ship to join Hill Dickinson in Leeds. The quartet appear to be following in the footsteps of IM's former head of employment, Glenn Hayes, who also recently made the switch to Hill Dicks. Irwin Mitchell was gracious in its statement, as a spokesman said: "We thank those leaving for their contribution during their time with Irwin Mitchell and wish them well in the future".

Meanwhile, an Allen & Overy insider told RollOnFriday that the firm has been making voluntary redundancies in their finance team, mainly of senior associates. The source said that the Magic Circle firm has “done it very quietly as everyone who wanted to take it, did take it”. It is not known whether the redundancies are connected with the merger, or indeed whether or not it's true, as the firm did not respond to requests for comment.

Comments

Stealth layoffs are becoming increasingly common in US and MC firms, particularly PE and finance.

Plenty of layoffs taking place quietly at the moment – these are just the tip of the iceberg. US firms especially seem to be quietly letting people go in quite sizeable number for their scale in some of their key areas.

Everyone knew (or at least should have known) that the gravy train was not going to last forever, so this probably shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

Until recently Trowers were proclaiming their strength in RE up and down the land. Clearly very poor recruitment decisions taken here by senior management to have to lose so many.

The 2020 and 2021 recruitment madness is now being calibrated.

At Trowers we have loads of EPs with inherited clients bringing in naff all and recruiting loads of people. They can't win work, do work or make strategic decisions but they are untouchable. The long term is looking pretty shit at Trowers.

Running any business as a member's club from the top, filling yr belly and dozing on the job only ever leads to it's poor cleaning staff in the 'you know what'.

@9.01, which US firms do you think are laying people off in finance?

Our debt team is super busy. Granted there are fewer new money acquisitions knocking around at the moment, but there are tonnes of add-ons and A&Es on the performing side and plenty of funkier stuff in the special sits space, in addition to the distressed work (which is naturally higher at this point in the business cycle).

Deeply committed to the wellbeing of our colleagues? Not all of them clearly.

Time to build on your transferable skills and retrain for a useful profession.

Poor recruitment strategies across all the offices with employees now suffering the consequences. The partners need to be interrogated on their failings instead of simply blaming the ‘continued slowdown in market conditions’. This was known for over a year and yet, they still went on a recruitment frenzy as if they were buying Freddos!

Santa got lost on his way but don’t worry, the Grim Reaper covered his shift!

To fair to Trowers I’ve heard that a few RE partners have been canned too, not just associates feeling the pain. Hope all find new roles.

Onboarded way more passengers than there was capacity on the ship. The ship has well and truly sunk. Merry Christmas in advance to those poor souls who have been failed by small men in big offices.

As a former colleague/ep once said to me on looking at who to let go, 'It's only business'. I don't agree. Good business requires good leadership, good leadership requires one to understand a business is more than 'only business'.