Law Practice Management
Firm’s Radical Layoff Alternative: Reduced Schedule for All, Including Partners
Posted Mar 12, 2009, 12:52 pm CST
By Martha Neil
As other major law partnerships reluctantly make layoffs, a BigLaw firm headquartered in the United Kingdom has come up with an unusual recession alternative.
Instead of asking anyone to leave, Norton Rose plans to put everyone at the international firm, including partners, on a reduced schedule for one year, reports Legal Week. This will be accomplished by having those at the firm work a four-day schedule and/or by having them take a brief sabbatical of up to 12 weeks.
The firm is capping the pay reductions which, of course, accompany the reduced schedule at 20 percent, the article says.
A few other law firms have encouraged some staff to reduce their workweeks as an alternative to layoffs. However, it appears that Norton Rose—which has made no layoffs so far—is the only major partnership to apply the strategy to everyone at the firm, Legal Week says.
In addition to maintaining the firm's reputation as a good employer, this alternative approach, which was announced today, gives the firm the flexibility to ramp back up rapidly if the economic situation improves or the firm suddenly gets a big matter that requires additional staffing, according to Peter Martyr, Norton Rose's chief executive.
"We believe it is prudent to take pre-emptive action to protect our business and our staff in case things get worse next year," he says. "The key for us is to ensure that we can respond rapidly to any future changes in levels of work and that is why we have worked on this strategy."
Comments not appearing after a few seconds? Try emptying your cache ("Temporary Internet files"), making sure Javascript is activated, and refresh this page.