Shoosmiths set to lay off 69 in new round of cuts

The 90-day consultation, which is set to affect 25 fee earners - including partners - and 44 support staff, was launched earlier this week (5 May) and will cover all of the firm's offices and most practice groups, including corporate and real estate.

However, the firm's conveyancing practice will remain unaffected following a redundancy programme in July last year when the firm made 28 job cuts in its Northampton-based consumer residential conveyancing group.

Those laid off in this latest redundancy round will expect to secure their income for between four to six months from the start of the consultation.

Shoosmiths' chief executive Paul Stothard said: "We enter this consultation reluctantly and with much sadness. We have avoided taking action much longer than many law firms, in part because we offer a very broad spread of services and some of our teams have remained extremely busy and partly because we have been prepared to sacrifice profit to retain teams of valuable and talented people."

He added: "However, the economic forecast is still uncertain and we now have little choice but to enter a redundancy programme to match our teams' capacities to the work flow. We do not anticipate that this current restructuring will affect our service delivery to clients and it should enable us to move forward from a leaner internal structure."

Earlier this week (5 May) Berwin Leighton Paisner launched a redundancy consultation that is likely to affect 85 staff in the firm's City headquarters including 30 legal, 30 business services and 25 secretarial roles.

On the same day CMS Cameron McKenna also launched a consultation, with 80 London-based jobs under threat.