Lawyers reduce their hours to save jobs

Published on Wednesday 4 March 2009 20:47

LAWYERS in the commercial property department of Burness have stuck a deal to reduce their hours rather than face redundancies.

Philip Rodney, chairman of Burness, yesterday told The Scotsman that two posts out of 16 had been at risk but that a proposal to reduce hours had been put forward as part of the firm's consultation process.

Talks with staff are continuing over a total of 19 jobs that are risk as a result of cuts at the law firm.

Burness – which has offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow – said the jobs were under threat in its property department and among facilities and IT staff.

Before the redundancies were proposed, Burness had 220 staff, including 43 partners.

Rodney said: "Regrettably it has now become apparent that the recession is going to be deeper and last longer then we had originally envisaged and, as a result, we began a consultation process involving up to 19 jobs during February.

"The process is expected to conclude within the next week or so and has affected the property department, IT and facilities."

He added: "The consultation process with our commercial property lawyers in Edinburgh, involving potentially two redundancies out of 16 members of staff, has resulted in us avoiding job losses following agreement by the firm to a proposal to reduce hours.

"Any member of staff that is made redundant will receive a redundancy payment in line with statutory requirements."

Rodney added: "The current economic crisis is having a major impact and practically every firm in the professional services sector in the UK has been affected by the downturn.

"We are one of the last law firms to take steps towards redundancies, having explored various ways in which we could try to avoid having to implement this process."