DLA Piper has announced that it is making a further 22 positions redundant in its Middle East offices after having already axed eight Dubai-based associates in early April 2009.
In this current round of layoffs, one partner and eight other fee earners are being shown the door in addition to a number of support staff. The layoffs are once again Dubai-heavy, with over a third of them happening in that now decimated office. The firm did not comment on which practice areas are affected, but ALB believes that they likely occurred in corporate, finance and project-related practices, all of which have ground to a halt since the financial crisis hit the Gulf in the last quarter of 2008.
"Unfortunately, staffing adjustments across the Middle East are unavoidable as the market is still impacted by the global downturn," said David Church, the firm's regional managing partner. "We have conducted a review to realign resources with current demand and have reduced our staff levels across the region by 9%."
The firm must surely have reached the magical 9% figure noted by Church. It was one of the first international law firms to formally announce layoffs in Asia earlier this year in addition to a previous round of redundancies in the Gulf region just last month. The total number of staff laid off by the firm across the Gulf and Asian regions now stands at 84.