Agile working has affected demand for traditional direct support, insurance litigation firm BLM said today, confirming that staff in its direct support teams have been offered voluntary redundancy.  BLM is reportedly seeking to cut up to 50 secretarial and support roles.

In a statement to the Gazette, BLM senior partner Mike Brown said: 'We have made a decision to review our direct support teams across all of our locations in line with our business improvement programme.

'We have made a significant investment in developing technology at our firm and many of our lawyers are now working in an agile way which has an impact upon the demand for traditional direct support.

'We have therefore offered voluntary redundancy to colleagues in our direct support teams and this process is currently ongoing.'

In its last financial results the firm attributed a steep fall in partner profits to a year of investment in the practice. Profit per equity partner dipped to £192,000 in 2015/16 from £265,000 the previous year, while net profit fell to £14.8m from £18.3m. Turnover rose from £104.1m to £107.7m

BLM was formed from the merger of top-50 firm Berrymans Lace Mawer with Scottish firm HBM Sayers in 2014. The firm has more than 200 partners and over 800 legal specialists across 13 offices.