UK Redundancies

This just in from Charles at The Orange Rag.

"Legal Week in the UK reports that Allen & Overy (A&O) has come to the end of its redundancy programme, with around 450 staff set to leave the firm this week. 200 associates and 200 support staff in A&O’s offices worldwide will leave the firm, with a further 47 equity partners also losing their jobs. Half of the cuts are expected to hit the London office (around 100 fee earners and 100 support staff). Overall, London will shrink by 10% as a result of additional staff taking voluntary redundancy.

The restructuring is expected to cost A&O £44m once redundancy packages are paid out, with the firm previously stating that equity partners had been asked to contribute an average of £30,000 each of fresh capital, equating to around £11m, to help fund it. A&O’s restructuring was guided by a series of principles set out by senior partner David Morley, who told staff that A&O had considered alternatives such as reduced hours, reduced pay, sabbaticals, secondments and trainee deferrals, but concluded that none of the methods would deliver the appropriate level of cost savings required."

The positive here for firms considering similar moves is that (unlike many of their peers), A&O took this hit all in one go, rather than hiding under a phased approach that saw small numbers of staff going in numerous 'rounds' of redundancies - an approach which keeps morale low for longer.

Darkness Falls

Allen & Overy are about to enter their long anticipated "dark period" before they press the global 'go-live' button for the Elite 3E accounting application. The end of May/start of June is the big date for the firm and we wish them (and the Baker Robbins crew who have been invaluable additional resources on the project) all the best after such a long, challenging and unique project. We look forward to hearing of the successes in June.

Law Firm Knowledge Management Conference Agenda Released

After a sold out 2008 conference, we are pleased to announce the full agenda of sessions for the upcoming Janders Dean Law Firm Knowledge Management Conference to be held in Sydney Australia on 28th May 2009 at L'Aqua Gold Room Darling Harbour.

Once again we have assembled some of the regions leading law firm and inhouse legal Knowledge Management specialists for this unique event.

Delegate places for the event are strictly limited due to venue capacity, and only a small number of delegate passes remain to this event. For registration instructions, please see here or alternatively contact us at info@jandersdean.com. As per the 2008 pricing agreement, for two paying delegates from the same firm, the third delegate place is free.

Whither KM? The Future Shape of Law Firm KM (Matthew Parsons, Author and former Global Director of Knowledge, Linklaters LLP)
- Where are we in the evolution of law firm KM?
- What are tomorrow's challenges and today's limitations?
- Where to for the CKO and KM workers of today?
- Predictions for the future

The Other Side. The Future Shape of Corporate KM (Justin Harness, Associate Director, Macquarie Bank)
- How does today's corporate KM differ from law firm KM?
- Are the challenges and limitations the same?
- What can we learn from corporate KM?
- Predictions for the future

Does KM Add Value to Your Law Firm - A Chief Operating Officer's View? (Janet Young, Chief Operating Officer, Freehills)
- What is the value proposition?
- What is the return on investment?
- How do you articulate/prove these to the partnership?
- What does the partnership actually think of KM?

Developments in Enterprise Search & Next Generation Solutions (Neil Etheridge, Solutions Evangelist, Autonomy iManage)

KM Case Study - Ensuring KM Relevance in an Economic Downturn (Rachel O'Connor, Director of Knowledge, Allens Arthur Robinson)
- How does your KM need to change in light of the economic conditions?
- How do you manage expectations during a period of potential cost cutting?
- How do you make the most of lawyer capacity for KM initiatives?
- Where are you allies in the firm?

Australian Tax Office eLibrary Project - A Case Study (Vanessa Lewis, Associate Director, Australian Taxation Office)
- Overview of the eLibrary project and product?
- What has been the impact on staff?
- What does it mean for knowledge/information management?
- Lessons from the successfully implementation of collaboration tools

"After the Buzz" Web 2.0 features in a KM world - How to translate social experiments into business solutions (Simon Price, Director, Recommind)
- Overview of legal market adoption of Web 2.0 features and applications
- What "Web 2.0" features are really appropriate for a KM/Search system?
- What are the implications to the firm?
- The future of Web 2.0 within the legal market?

Developments in Legal Research (Anna Thomas, Associate Director Research Solutions Development/Marc K Peter, Marketing Director/CMO Pacific, LexisNexis)

Delegate places for the event are strictly limited due to venue capacity, and only a small number of delegate passes remain to this event. For registration instructions, please see here or alternatively contact us at info@jandersdean.com.

Law Firm Knowledge Management Conference - May 28th 2009

Registration instructions and information for the 2nd Annual Janders Dean Law Firm Knowledge Management Conference to be held in Sydney on Thursday May 28th are now online at www.jandersdean.com/conference

Delegate places are strictly limited and few places remain available.

Latest on Lovells

Lovells is the latest UK firm to announce support staff redundancies, with close to 80 people from the professional services teams being let go this week. Details are yet to emerge on which support areas were hardest hit.

The firm also announced a salary freeze for all staff at 2008 levels on the same day that Slaughter & May announced a salary freeze, and Norton Rose announced that 96% of staff were backing the firm's 4 day work week scheme (where staff will be paid 85% of base salary, and/or to take a sabbatical of between 4 and 12 weeks on 30% of their base salary).