The Brief:
A&O Shearman has cut business services roles in London, the latest firm to axe support staff as AI reshapes back-office functions.
Back home, Aussie firms like MinterEllison admit AI is shrinking graduate intakes.
Everyone assumed AI would change how lawyers work. But what about the people working around them?
The international cull
A&O Shearman confirmed this week that it is cutting around 20 roles across its London finance, marketing and IT teams. No partners or fee earners are affected.
“Over the past two years, we have been investing significantly in our central business teams, as well as in technology and data, to deliver smarter and more consistent ways of working across a firm of our scale and ambition. That work has created new roles and reshaped others. In some areas, this has meant limited and localised headcount reductions,” said an A&O Shearman spokesperson.
It is the latest in a string of identical moves.
Freshfields cut paralegal numbers at its Manchester legal support hub in September, framing it as keeping pace with a fast-changing market.
Clifford Chance axed around 50 back-office roles last November, roughly 10% of its London business services headcount.
Baker McKenzie followed in February, phasing out roles across its global business services team, including marketing and secretarial support.
Firms are investing heavily in AI. Tasks that once required dedicated support staff — research, doc handling, marketing — are increasingly automated.
The Australian picture
Australian firms are deep into the same AI rollouts, with Allens, MinterEllison, Mallesons and others already embedded in Legora and Harvey.
The support staff cull hasn’t seemed to arrive in Australia yet. Instead, it’s graduates taking the hit first.
The AFR reported that Minters has become the first major Australian firm to say out loud what many have been thinking: AI is eating entry-level work. The firm cut its graduate cohort by almost a third this year, to 72.
HSF Kramer, Norton Rose Fulbright, Allens and Mallesons also cut grad numbers this year, though all attributed the reductions primarily to seasonal variation and earlier over-hiring rather than AI.
Overall, graduate hiring across eight top Australian firms fell 7% this financial year.
What’s striking is the contrast.
International firms are cutting support staff. Australian firms are trimming the lawyers of tomorrow.
Source: Global Legal Post, AFR