Revenue falls to £2bn for law firm

Law firm DLA Piper has reported that revenues are down to $2.47bn (£2.02bn) –  a decline of 2.9% – which the firm is blaming on currency exchange rate losses.

It blamed its “large international presence” for the decline for the full year in 2015.

This was offset by net profits, which increased to $643.4m (£526.11) from $605.4m (£495.2m).

The total numbers of lawyers declined by 140 to 3,615 as the company trimmed its staff numbers.

Revenue per lawyer was up slightly to $683,189 compared to $677,091 the year before and in sterling, DLA said overall turnover was up 3%.

The results follows a difficult year for the firm in 2016 in which it announced 200 job cuts, later reduced to 175, as part of a restructuring of its support services teams, with more of those operations being handled by its Warsaw centre in Poland.

Just above 8% of the 300-strong North West workforce was axed across its Manchester and Liverpool offices.