Approximately 100 Allens Arthur Robinson staff have opted for the voluntary redundancy program announced earlier in April.
Although applications for the program closed last Friday, AAR is yet to confirm the exact numbers of individuals that have opted for redundancy. "Later this week we'll know the exact numbers, but around 100 people would be a fairly accurate estimate," a spokesman from AAR said.
The firm maintains that it had not anticipated the number of redundancies which would eventuate from the program. "There certainly hasn't been a program like this I can recall in the legal sector in the last 20 years, so there was no anticipation or expectation around numbers," the spokesman continued.
The firm said that many different levels of staff volunteered for redundancy, and that it was a "fairly even split" across the different practice groups, as well as between paralegals and lawyers.
The motives behind the redundancies were varied. The firm reported that some staff were taking early retirement or a career break, while others were opting to start new businesses or take time out to study. Slowing workflow was not mentioned. "It was structured as a quite generous program," said the spokesman. "The feedback we've had from people was basically that this made them think about their next step, as opposed to people not having enough work to do."