Orrick Hetherington & Sutcliffe has becomes the latest US law firm to announce staff cuts with 75 redundancies across its US, Asian and European offices.

Around 40 lawyers in the firm’s real estate, corporate and structured finance teams are set to leave alongside a further 35 support staff.

Half of the cuts will be in the firm’s US offices with the remainder divided equally between Asia and Europe.

Orrick, which has 1,000 lawyers, said: “Throughout 2008, we have done all we could have done to avoid today’s action: we have redeployed lawyers to different practices and we have cut expenses.

“Unfortunately, our staffing levels in the affected practices still remained too high given the economic environment our clients and we face. The three affected practice areas, however, continue their roles as important financial and strategic contributors.”

Last month, Orrick hired a group of almost 30 lawyers from dissolved firm Heller Ehrman. In 2007, it announced plans to merge with New York-based Dewey Ballantine but the union was later abandoned.

Orrick said the current job losses were driven by global business conditions and were not performance related.

Earlier this week White and Case, another US firm with a global presence, said it was shedding 70 associates and 90 support staff, equal to 3 per cent of its total workforce.

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