National firm CMS has opened redundancy talks with dozens of lawyers.
The firm is not making any public comment, but it is understood that it has entered redundancy consultation in the UK corporate practice.
CMS has more than 250 corporate lawyers based in this country advising on M&A, private equity, equity capital markets, joint ventures and corporate advisory issues.
The vast majority of these roles are based in London, with small numbers in Edinburgh, Sheffield, Glasgow, Manchester and Aberdeen.
In the legal market in general, transactional work has declined significantly since a post-lockdown spike. Thomson Reuters reported in July that demand at the largest law firms was down nearly 5% over the past year, mostly due to contraction in mergers & acquisitions and real estate work.
Last month CMS reported a 6.2% rise in global income to €1.862bn in calendar 2022, while the revenue of the UK LLP climbed to £686m, a 6.4% rise.
