Slater & Gordon hires 80 lawyers and staff amid critical UK restructure 

Slater & Gordon has embarked on a mass hiring initiative as part of its UK restructure, The Lawyer can reveal.

UK CEO Ken Fowlie confirmed Slater & Gordon was in the midst of a hiring spree but declined to reveal how many people it was looking to bring in.

According to a source in the market the firm has hired more than 80 lawyers and staff over the last four months.

The hiring spree follows the firm axing 640 jobs across the UK last year as part of the first phase of its restructuring process.

Speaking to The Lawyer Fowlie said: “We are looking for people in specific roles and locations and we have been for a little while. It’s part of the reorganisation and transformation activity that we are in the midst of.

“We said that we are going to operate our business from key strategic locations, which are relative to our client needs and where there are opportunities to attract quality talent.”

The firm has grown its business legal services teams across its offices in Cardiff, Chester, Manchester, Milton Keynes, and Preston. The business legal services division includes Slater & Gordon’s intellectual property, dispute resolution, environmental regulations and commercial property practices.

Slater & Gordon also relocated branches of its personal legal services division, which includes its wills and family law practices, into its offices in Milton Keynes, Cambridge, and Chester.

Manchester has also seen the launch of a new specialised children’s team while London and Leeds have also been named as some of the firm’s “key locations”.

Elsewhere Slater & Gordon has closed a number of offices including in Bristol, Derby, Halifax, and Failsworth. During the Australian-listed firm’s annual general meeting chairman John Skippen revealed 15 offices be closed by January 2017 and further closures would be announced next year.

Last year the firm increased its turnover by 37 per cent to £123.9m in the UK, but posted a loss of £6.9m.

The firm also posted an overall loss of A$9583m, which was largely attributed to Slater & Gordon’s £700m acquisition of insurance outsourcer Quindell’s professional indemnity arm.

When asked why the cuts were necessary Fowlie said: “We had multiple teams performing work and our judgement was that the work for clients could be delivered by a consolidated team.

“Rather than having two locations with two teams doing a particular task our judgement was we could deliver that work from one location with one team and consolidate the resources into that team. That impacts the business in terms of your spans of control and the efficiency in which you can carry out that work.”

Source: The Lawyer

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