Law firms are right to cut underperforming partners as they look to slash costs ahead of a downturn, the UK’s leading corporate lawyer said.

As reported yesterday in The Times, up to 2,000 partners at the City's top law firms could be at risk of losing their jobs this year as those firms force senior lawyers to accept a reduced share of profits or leave.

Nigel Boardman, a star partner at Slaughter and May, said that law firms could not afford to follow banks in making wholesale redundancies among their junior ranks as it would leave them with a shortage of qualified talent in years to come.

"I don't think it follows that a downturn in work means that you cut your associates," Mr Boardman said. "If you have to cut, cut your partners' profits and even your partners more than you cut your associates."

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He added: "Unlike investment banks, which can draw on lawyers and accountants and MBAs to replenish their numbers when the upturn comes, good lawyers are hard to find."

Mr Boardman's comments echoed those he had made earlier in a private roundtable discussion of senior legal figures hosted at a plush London hotel by Graham Gill, a legal consultancy.

Although many of the top firms have begun seeking legal advice on restructuring their partnerships, Mr Boardman said that Slaughter and May — believed to be the City’s richest law firm with a profit margin reportedly in excess of 50 per cent — had not itself been forced to make cuts.

"We are lucky that our business model holds up well in downturns and we have been extremely busy," he said.

The firm, which paid its top partners £2.4 million last year after generating revenues of £421 million, according to Legal Business, a trade publication, has been one of the most active since the financial crisis began, advising the Government on the rescue of the banking sector.

Mr Boardman, who led the Slaughter and May team advising the Treasury, is the best known of a clutch of star dealmakers at the firm, personally representing ten FTSE100 companies and Arsenal Football Club.

The son of Lord Boardman, a Conservative Cabinet Minister, he was involved in some of the most publicised deals in recent years, advising Reuters on its £8 billion merger with Thomson and mining giant BHP Billiton on its aborted offer for Rio Tinto. He joined Slaughter and May in 1973.

alex.spence@thetimes.co.uk

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