Up to 14 legal jobs at risk

Dec 12 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

WATSON Burton has become the latest North East law firm to announce that jobs are under threat.

The Newcastle-based firm said up to 14 posts, mainly solicitors, were at risk of redundancy because of the falling demand for legal services in its key commercial and industrial sectors.

The firm employs around 400 people – 320 in Newcastle and the remainder at its offices in Leeds and London. The under-threat jobs are all on Tyneside.

Senior partner Rob Langley said Watson Burton would seek to retrain and redeploy those staff whose jobs were at risk.

“If we can place them into areas where we are busy, typically our corporate recovery work is very active during a downturn,” he said. “We like to look after our people, we are proud of our staff retention rates. We want to keep as many people as possible.”

Mr Langley said he was “confident” there would be no further job losses at Watson Burton next year.

“We have had a root and branch review to make sure we the organisation is fit for purpose and the challenging times we find ourselves in. We are pretty confident – we don’t think there will be any more.”

The economic downturn has led to a number of job losses in the North East legal sector this year. Dickinson Dees made 57 people redundant from its d3 Legal offshoot, which it recently sold to Bradford-based Optima Legal, the UK’s largest volume legal firm. D3 handled housing-related work and had suffered because of the problems at Northern Rock.

Ward Hadaway on Newcastle’s Quayside, is looking at up to 30 job losses, while Muckle LLP, at Time Central on Gallowgate, has shed 13 staff and McKeags on Carliol Square reported 11 job losses.