Partner David Webber told Lawyers Weekly that the move was "very unfortunate" and came as a last resort following the slowing of the United States and European market - on which the firm was heavily reliant - since the outset of the global financial crisis.

"A large percentage of our work comes from overseas, and it was solely due to the fact that while our Australian client base is still buoyant and active and the work is still coming in at the same rate, the work from the US and Europe has dropped off significantly," he said.

"We saw the impact early, but rather than make redundancies early we held off for as long as we could, hoping that things would get better."

Webber added that the firm is confident that the market will improve, and emphasised that further redundancies will not be necessary.

"We don't intend to do anything like this again. This is simply it," he said.

"We certainly don't see the overseas work dropping anymore and it is slowly improving, and certainly the Australian market is improving, so we see that things will get better."

- Claire Chaffey