Allen & Overy, Norton Rose and Berwin Leighton Paisner lead staff satisfaction scores for UK's largest law firms

Allen & Overy (A&O), Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) and Norton Rose have emerged as standout performers in a flagship Legal Week project grading law firms on the satisfaction of their lawyers.

Legal Week Intelligence's (LWI's) 2009 Employee Satisfaction Survey identified the trio as top performers among the 25 largest UK law firms (see table below). Other firms to secure top-five rankings were CMS Cameron McKenna and Bird & Bird.

The satisfaction ranking is based on 'core' criteria that respondents said were the most important to them: prestige of firm; work/life balance; being valued as an employee; culture; quality of work; client interaction; salary; bonus; career communication; partnership prospects; and billable hours expectations.

Top 25 firms on average each attracted more than 80 responses with more than 4,000 qualified UK solicitors below partner level responding to the report.

The result will be viewed as particularly welcome for A&O, which this year unveiled a high-stakes restructuring programme. Despite the scale of its job cuts, equivalent to roughly 9% of its firmwide workforce, A&O's satisfaction score was barely changed on 2008.

A&O managing partner Wim Dejonghe told Legal Week: "I am really pleased with the [LWI] result. We took the decision [with the firm's restructuring] to do something that was globally comprehensive and we wanted to be totally transparent. I think that was appreciated."

Norton Rose, which has opted to bring in flexi-working as an alternative to job cuts, remained one of the top-ranked City firms despite seeing a fall on its 2008 score.

Slaughter and May was another strong performer as one of the few top 25 firms to hold its satisfaction ranking roughly level with 2008. Slaughters senior partner Chris Saul said: "We have had some interesting work and, while you can never say never, we have been able to avoid redundancies and trainee contract deferrals and that has been important."

Bird & Bird chief executive David Kerr agreed that the decision to maintain this firm's trainee intake had contributed its high score. He added: "I do think there is a good general mood among the troops."

The report, the sixth annual report on staff satisfaction from Legal Week's independent research arm, is the first comprehensive picture of morale and career satisfaction at major UK firms after a 12-month period dominated by job losses. However, despite modest falls in the satisfaction scores of most firms compared to 2008, the report suggests the recession has already sharply changed attitudes among junior lawyers.

So while previous LWI research found sharp hikes in pay and benefits had limited success in winning over disgruntled junior lawyers, fears of job losses appears to have made many assistants relatively more content with their careers.

The findings also contradict the expectation that 'ruthless' City firms would incur plunging morale in comparison to national and regional law firms.

While City and international firms dominate the top half of the rankings, DLA Piper is the lowest-ranked firm. The bottom five also includes Eversheds, Hammonds and Irwin Mitchell, though the latter firm managed to substantially improve its score compared to 2008.

The findings confirm that heavy redundancy programmes had a substantial negative impact on assistant satisfaction. Nearly 90% of the 160 respondents at DLA Piper said the firm's job cuts had damaged its reputation, the highest of any firm. The finding reflects the criticism DLA Piper faced for the terms it offered redundant staff.

Commenting the findings, DLA Piper chief executive Nigel Knowles said the number of responding solicitors from his firm was a "relatively small percentage of our people".

He added: "At the time of conducting this survey we were going through a consultation period where a lot of our people were nervous. If the survey was repeated today our performance would have be enhanced. We have a stronger communication channel now with all of our people."

Linklaters also attracted criticism from responding solicitors for its restructuring, though the firm achieved a relatively high ranking due to scoring well on most criteria.

More recent job cuts could further shift the picture as several highly-ranked firms – including BLP and Camerons – have announced redundancy programmes since the research was conducted in March and April.

The research suggests some firms face a major challenge to win back their own staff after a bruising period. One head of a major City firm said: "Once the perception of your law firm as a bad employer becomes student folklore it is very hard to shift."

The full report will be published at the end of June. The report contains individual rankings for 58 firms drawn from the UK's top 50 and the 10 largest London offices of US practices graded on 37 criteria.

For further information on the report, please contact Paul Birk on 020 7316 9864 or email [email protected].