The Middle East head of legal giant DLA Piper has hit back at former employees who have attacked the firm on internet forums after the company’s decision to lay off staff after the economic downturn hit the region, saying: “We don’t care”.
Abdul Aziz Abdullah Al Yaqout, the head of DLA Piper in the Middle East, said in an interview with Arabian Business: “As far as the firm is concerned, and more importantly, as far as my employees are concerned, we don’t care.”
Al Yaqout said he believed it was only a small number of the firm’s ex-employees, recruited at the end of 2008 and then laid off at the start of 2009 as the financial crisis decimated the firm’s workload, who were using online forums to damage the company’s reputation.
“There is no validity to it whatsoever. To give you the full story of why a group of people – and I think it is a very small group of people have been fuelling this – are disgruntled about what happened: in 2008, Dubai was in a boom situation and we were hiring people in November and December, because we were promised a whole pipeline of work going forward.
“We had clients who asked for more and more services from us and we needed more people. The hiring process is not done in a day, and if you hire someone they don’t begin the next day. We had people flying in in January and February and March whom we had hired at the end of 2008 and for whom we did not have any work.
“So obviously people were very disappointed and I think this is reflected in these comments on the blogs but I have to say I think it is a very small group of people who are intent on damaging the reputation of the firm. As far as the firm is concerned, and more importantly, as far as my employees are concerned, we don’t care.”
Al Yaqout added that during 2008 the firm’s biggest client in the Middle East was Dubai government-owned developer Nakheel, but in 2009 this work had largely dried up. He said the firm currently did no work for Nakheel.
“Are we doing work for Nakheel right now? No, we are not doing work for Nakheel right now. I wouldn’t say we are not representing them anymore. We still have a relationship with them, we are just not doing any work with them right now,” he said.
DLA Piper, according to its own website, is the largest legal services provider in the world. In the Middle East it employs 177 lawyers. Al Yaqout said there were no more rounds of redundancy planned.
One poster, commenting anonymously on the The Lawyer’s website said of DLA Piper in the Middle East: “Their lack of judgment in recruitment, financial management, people management and client management is extraordinary, and there are enough ex-DLA lawyers out there (myself included) to verify this. And as for… the ‘incompetence’ of the leavers, it is interesting to note the excellent roles now occupied by many if not all ex-DLA people in the region (myself included).”
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