DLA Piper is aiming to give junior lawyers and support staff a greater say in the firm's strategy as part of a bid to improve staff engagement.

The top 10 firm has set up a number of focus groups across the UK, in a move championed by newly-appointed UK managing partner David Bradley to help formulate a new three-year strategy.

The groups have been meeting through June and July. Bradley commented: "It is my primary responsibility to get people looking forward, so in early June we started a significant staff engagement exercise through a series of focus groups running across our firm in the UK, with 20% of our workforce – from staff through to partners participating.

"There is a relatively free agenda although we have some topics to gauge thoughts on, which will be important when formulating the next three-year strategy."

The meetings are due to finish later this month (15 July). The feedback will be presented to the firm in a series of presentations in the autumn.

The move comes following controversy attracted by DLA Piper in recent months after it embarked on two redundancy programmes in the UK, which have so far claimed more than 100 jobs.

Bradley said: "We are trying to do some things to make sure we keep the teams we have together and motivated. We have aligned the business as well as we can for 2009 and so now it is about getting good people focused for the longer term."

Separately, the firm is offering an extra four weeks' holiday on 20% pay with 100 staff and lawyers signing up to this scheme on a voluntary basis. The firm has also announced it is keeping on 54 newly-qualifieds in September out of 96 trainees in total.