The role of the legal secretary is changing, but for 28 staff at Slaughter and May’s London office it’s also ending with redundancies cutting the 165 members of the London team.
Slaughter and May say the result is the “changing role” of secretaries at law firms with technological advances permitting lawyers greater flexibility as to how they communicate with clients.
Reaction among readers of The Lawyer online was less than laudatory on the move by Slaughters, whose partners earn an average of £1.84 million each.
As two readers commented:
“Frankly, I’m just glad to be out of the place. All those bullying partners – screaming at everyone from secretaries to trainees to senior associates. I’m happy to take the 3 months pay off being mooted plus my notice period and go to a firm that treats people more decently!”
And another.
“go to a firm that treats people more decently”
Good luck with that. I think you will find they all have a deeply sociopathic culture, in the City at least.”
However, the move towards culling secretarial numbers appears to be gaining ground among firms both large and small as technology including the ubiquitous ipad and iphone make secretarial work in the old sense, less a requirement of the legal office than it ever has been in the past.
