Before Christmas it appeared as though Australia’s legal market thought they might avoid the worst effects of the global slowdown..
A report in today’s edition of the Australian newspaper reports redundancies at Blake Dawson.
Although it appears from the piece that most firms are still remaining confident about the amount of work that they can generate in 2009
The Australian writes:
Recently appointed Minter Ellison chief executive partner John Weber said the firm was not planning any redundancies and expected the next six months to be very busy.
Mr Weber said the firm was expecting more work in the government, infrastructure and human relations disputes areas.
Mr Weber said the firm had picked up some lawyers from Britain and would continue to recruit a large number of graduates so it did not have any "unfortunate gaps" when times improved.
"The last thing we want to do is stop recruiting at that level," Mr Weber said. "We have to take a long-term view about things like recruitment. Getting quality people and keeping quality people is mission-critical.".
Cost savings had come in other areas, such as the amount of office space the firm needed.
"In a number of offices we have been able to sub-let space that was surplus to our requirements," Mr Weber said.
Opportunities would also come from "cashed-up foreign investors" looking to invest in Australia, he said.
"I don’t sense there is a great sense of doom and gloom," Mr Weber said. "There are enough parts of the business travelling very well at the moment."
See the full report at
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,24949587-17044,00.html
