The collapse of construction and services giant Carillion is set to keep dozens of lawyers across practices ranging from restructuring, to litigation and employment busy for years to come, according to partners.

The Wolverhampton-based company filed for compulsory liquidation yesterday (15 January), after last-ditch rescue talks with lenders failed.

A raft of firms have already secured roles advising on both the insolvency and the company's difficulties in the run up to the collapse, with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Dentons advising both the official receiver and PwC as special manager on the liquidation.

Others involved include Carillion's long-term adviser Slaughter and May; Clifford Chance and Linklaters for the lenders; Mayer Brown for the Pension Protection Fund; as well as Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Willkie Farr & Gallagher.

With Carillion's public sector contracts set to be re-tendered, it's likely to be only the tip of the iceberg.

Kirkland & Ellis City restructuring partner Kon Asimacopoulos says the scale of the legal activity that will follow the liquidation is immense.

"It is very significant in scale, reach and complexity," he says. "This is one of the largest corporate failures in recent years, impacting directly and indirectly thousands of businesses and tens of thousands of people. Given the impact to such a large number of stakeholders, dozens of firms are already involved, with more to come.

"First, it is firms with a historic relationship with and relating to the company. Then it will be firms looking to see if there are opportunities to purchase contracts or assets."

Construction and service contracts now up for grabs include a £2.8bn military facilities maintenance role, a £1.4bn contract for building part of the H2S rail link, as well as hospital maintenance contracts.

Managing these contracts and Carillion's employees will be "unusually complex" according to Akin Gump London senior partner and restructuring specialist James Roome.

"I would expect employment lawyers to be very busy as Carillion's contracts are taken across," Roome says. "The means by which the government, via the official receiver, will take over contracts and groups of employees is likely to be unusually complex."

One partner involved in the process describes the type of work that will follow as "old-school insolvency" and predicts a flurry of activity in the coming weeks, in which the most profitable elements of the business will be parcelled up and sold to rival companies to keep key services running.

Partners from across disciplines such as corporate, commercial, banking and finance are likely to get involved at this point, the partner says, with deals likely to get done quickly given the political imperative to keep services running.

Roome, who also predicts a burst of contract sales, says: "From a legal point of view, a liquidator has little protection if he or she incurs trading losses in a liquidation. The liquidator has to close down the business at once and sell the assets. Liquidation is planned as a hard stop, a fire sale, and a lot of value is lost that way. In this case, however, David Lidington [MP, minster for the cabinet office] appears to be saying that the government has agreed to support the official receiver to trade on for long enough to transfer the government contracts."

Some of these contracts are overseas, including about £2bn worth of contracts in the Gulf and a £300m contract in Canada. It is understood that Slaughters will be advising on the company's overseas assets. The magic circle firm is a longstanding member of the company's legal panel.

Chair of Quinn Emanuel's construction and engineering practice James Bremen predicts that Carillion's collapse will lead to numerous construction disputes relating to its international construction contracts.

"The really interesting thing that comes out of Carillion is there will be a bunch of contracts where they are in difficulty or have been terminated. There are probably roles for lawyers to represent the trustees for all of those contracts. They've dug a big hole so someone has to go into that mess and collect the money. There may be dozens of litigations and arbitrations both up and down the contractual chain."

A number of partners say that it is unusual for a company like Carillion to go directly into liquidation rather than first entering administration. Unlike an administration, which is intended to keep a company afloat, insolvency ultimately aims to "perform contracts, sell what can be sold, deal with claims, and wind down the remainder", says Asimacopoulos.

One restructuring partner suggests that liquidation allows for termination rights over contracts, giving the government more influence over what happens next and potentially over the fire sale predicted by partners.

Following the protection of key services, Asimacopoulos predicts that there will be a period of assessing the impact of the insolvency on those services and dealing with the insolvency process. Only after this does he predict that lawyers will move on to "the human impact", including employee and pension-related issues, which will create further activity.

Akin Gump insolvency partner Barry Russell, who is acting for private placement holders following the collapse, adds: "It is very early days and the press coverage has probably not overstated it. This is a spectacular and unfortunate collapse and the jury is still out on what will happen."