Clifford Chance is reducing its London business services workforce by 10% as the international law firm accelerates its use of artificial intelligence and reshapes its operational structure.
The firm, one of the world’s largest legal practices, is cutting about 50 roles across finance, HR and IT, with a further 35 positions set to undergo changes in scope or responsibilities. The move was first reported by the Financial Times and reflects both the growing impact of AI and a decline in demand for certain support functions.
Part of the shift is also linked to increased work being handled in offices outside the UK and US, including teams based in Poland and India.
A spokesperson for Clifford Chance said: “In line with our strategy to strengthen our operations, we can confirm we are proposing changes to some of our London-based business professional functions. The proposed changes could see the creation of new roles, changes to the scope of roles, revised team structures and in some cases a reduction in roles.”
Office-based jobs are widely considered vulnerable to advancements in AI, which increasingly performs tasks once carried out by human staff. Tools capable of coding, conducting research, scheduling meetings and reviewing contracts are enabling firms to reduce administrative workloads and streamline processes.
Research shows the trend is already reshaping workplaces. A recent survey by the British Standards Institution, covering 850 business leaders across seven countries, found that 41% of bosses said AI was helping them cut employee numbers.
The global chairman of PwC, Mohamed Kande, also signalled that the firm’s long-term hiring plans are being reconsidered due to AI-driven efficiencies. He confirmed that PwC will no longer pursue its previous target of hiring 100,000 people over a five-year period.
“When we made the plans to hire that many people, the world looked very, very different,” he told the BBC. “Now we have artificial intelligence. We want to hire, but I don’t know if it’s going to be the same level of people that we hire – it will be a different set of people.”
Despite this shift, PwC faces challenges in recruiting AI specialists. “We are looking for hundreds and hundreds of engineers today to help us drive our AI agenda, but we just cannot find them,” Kande said.
The UK head of PwC added in September that AI is “certainly reshaping roles”, though the firm’s recent fall in graduate recruitment was attributed primarily to weaker economic conditions.
