Irwin Mitchell has seen three partners resign from its business legal services division (BLS).

London head of employment Chris Tutton and litigators Simon Ellis and Daniel Brumpton have all resigned from the firm.

Tutton, who is based in the firm's London office, has been a partner since 2014 and heads the firm's City employment team.

Ellis has been with the firm since February 2015 and is a litigation partner in the Birmingham office. He was previously a senior associate at DLA Piper and before that worked in-house at HSBC.

Litigation partner Brumpton is a professional negligence specialist based in the firm's Sheffield office. It is unclear where any of the three are going next or when their notice periods expire. 

The resignations follow a number of senior exits in recent months including head of construction David Parton, who joined Nabarro in January, former planning head Oliver Martin, who left in December to set up his own firm, operations director Richard Clark, who left in December to join Berg law firm and London-based practice director Myles Allison who left for Baker & McKenzie in December.

Meanwhile the firm's former commercial litigation head, Nigel Kissack, retired in June 2015, less than two years after he was brought in from Pinsent Masons to head the team.

One Irwin Mitchell partner said further exits were rumoured, adding "the worrying thing is who goes next?".

Another former partner said that the litigation team had been "absolutely decimated".

On top of the departures mentioned above, others leaving the practice over the last three years include previous litigation head Jeremy Marshall, who joined litigation funder Bentham Europe in 2014, litigation partner Mark Elder who joined Shoosmiths in 2015, regional head of litigation John Lord, who left for TLT in Manchester in 2013 alongside a 30-strong team, and business crime partner Dan Stowers who joined Gordons in 2014.

While not all of the departures have been voluntary, former partners said some reflect the difficulty of building a practice in a firm with a large and successful personal injury (PI) division.

One said: "It was difficult to successfully sell business legal services in circumstances where the PI side of the business viewed all of my prospective clients as prospective targets."

Another added: "The investment in BLS was supposed to be a hedge against the downturn in PI, but the PI guys are doing well. Investing in BLS is a good idea if you bring in the right people, but if you bring in people without a practice what are you left with?"

While it has seen departures, Irwin Mitchell has been actively bringing in new laterals, with 10 new partner hires since March 2015.

These include corporate partner Philip Goldsborough from Pinsent Masons, pensions partner Andrew Ashley Taylor from DWF and planning partner Martha Grekos from Eversheds. In addition it has hired two commercial litigators; Donna Goldsworthy joined from Cozen O'Connor and Duncan Hope from DWF.

The firm merged with Thomas Eggar in December 2015 to create a firm with a combined revenue of more than £250m.

The merger means that the firm generates about half of its revenue from its PI division, with the other half made up of BLS and private client work.

An Irwin Mitchell spokesperson said: "We wish Chris, Simon and Dan well in the future and we will continue developing our fast-growing BLS division, building on our successful recruitment programme."