Lloyds Bank has restructured its legal team for the second time in a year, leading to job losses for junior lawyers at its London headquarters.
The exits are part of a “reorganisation” of the bank’s legal function that took place in February amid wider organisational changes at the bank, leading to 9,000 job losses.
It follows a previous restructure of the legal team last year that led to around 25 mid-level redundancies, the closure of its regional litigation teams, and the departures and appointments of several senior legal staff.
News of the latest restructure has emerged as details of an internal staff survey at Lloyds show widespread discontent among some arms of Lloyds’ legal team.
Results of the survey, provided to The Lawyer, show a significant majority of both the commercial banking and lending support legal teams responded unfavourably to questions about satisfaction and engagement in their jobs.
A Lloyds source, who took part in the staff survey, said the engagement scores showed “some of the worse scores in the entire organisation”.
They added the survey was undertaken late last year “before a reorganisation of the legal team was even announced”.
Bank insiders have since criticised the “revolving door” of the legal function after several senior roles changed hands last year and complained of low morale as a result of the restructures.
Former Linklaters managing partner Simon Davies joined the bank in the new role of chief legal, people and strategy officer in January; litigation general counsel Michael Hartridge exited the bank last August, resurfacing at Harbour Litigation Funding several months later; and Barclays head of legal for corporate banking Joanna Carver was brought in to lead the commercial banking legal team last July.
General counsel Kate Cheetham also stepped into the top job last year, succeeding Andrew Whittaker who had held the role for just two years.
Two new divisional general counsel are understood to have been appointed in recent months, with one relocated from Australia by the bank.
A statement from Lloyds said: “The group announced organisational changes in early February as part of the group’s three-year strategy already announced in October 2014. As part of this, a number of roles were created in legal and a very small number of legally qualified roles were reduced.”