BT restructure leads to avalanche of job-hunting lawyers

As telecoms giant British Telecom restructures, its in-house lawyers are looking around the City for jobs, the Gazette has learned, but the legal market is jittery following collapsing market confidence in the sector.Tumbling profits announced by a range of European and US companies - mainly caused by the huge cost of third-generation mobile telephone licences last year - have led to a rash of redundancy announcements.Last week Eriksson announced job cuts of 12,000, while Motorola is cutting up to17,000 jobs.British Telecom has one of the largest in-house legal teams in the UK - where more than 200 of its 230 lawyers are based.A spokeswoman told the Gazette the company is restructuring all departments by sending staff to work in the major divisions, such as BT Open World, BT Ignite, BT Wireless and BT Yell, rather than keeping them centralised.The spokeswoman insisted that the restructuring would involve long-term increase in in-house lawyers.

But she confirmed that 'there is a lot of uncertainty - and lawyers used to working together may not like the idea of the change, and they are allowed to look elsewhere'.Robyn Durie, a telecoms partner at Linklaters, said there was currently 'an oversupply of telecoms lawyers on the market', owing to the restructuring of BT.The market for lawyers within City firms is also getting jittery.

Chris Watson, telecoms specialist at Allen & Overy said: 'Many medium-sized City firms who arrived late in the telecoms market are no longer recruiting telecoms solicitors, and many of their current assistants will be redeployed across other departments.'One partner in a top 20 City firm said: 'Longer term, the picture is looking bleak, and the number of law firm players in the telecomsmarket will be reduced.'Another magic circle partner said that BT lawyers might lack thespecialist legal knowledge to find jobs in the City.

He said: 'I was approached recently by a senior BT lawyer looking for a job, and I had to say no.'Jeremy Fleming