Ince & Co is paying half of its autumn intake of trainees £7,000 to defer their start dates by a year.

Five of the firm's autumn intake will now begin their training contracts in 2019, in a move understood to be linked to the redundancy consultation announced by the firm last week.

The process of deciding which trainees would put their training contracts back by 12 months was voluntary, with issues such as personal circumstances taken into consideration.

An Ince spokesperson said: "We are proud of the quality of legal training provided at Ince & Co and over the last two years have retained approximately 90% of the trainees that joined us. To maintain these high standards, we believe that those trainees that are due to join us in August 2018 will benefit from a smaller intake.

"We have therefore agreed to defer five out of our 10 future trainees until August 2019, and in appreciation have compensated them with a sum of £7,000. We look forward to welcoming all our future trainees to the firm."

Last week, Ince announced a redundancy consultation that could see more between 32 and 36 roles go. The majority of the job losses are likely to be in business services; however, fee earner positions – include associates and, potentially, salaried partners – may also be affected.

The firm declined to comment on the number of fee earners and business services staff at risk of redundancy, or the geographic split of the potential job losses.

Ince has been eyeing up potential merger partners in recent years, and last year held exploratory talks with firms including insurance rival Hill Dickinson.

Photo credit: Jim Linwood