National law firm BLM is to close its Bristol office and offer all 17 staff, including four partners, the chance to work remotely.
The firm, which specialises in insurance law, is also shutting down its office in Leeds, where it has 16 staff including three partners, and entering into a redundancy consultation, which is expected to affect 89 job in its legal support and corporate services teams. 
BLM said it had decided not to renew the leases on its Bristol office in St Thomas Court on Thomas Lane and Leeds office when they expire next year.
The firm, then known as Berrymans Lace Mawer, opened its Bristol office in 2010.
Senior partner Matthew Harrington said: “Whilst we are ceasing to have a physical office in Bristol and Leeds, our colleagues will be very much a part of the future of BLM supporting the firm’s clients as they do now.
“This is an opportunity to launch a new way of working, retaining local links but operating in a virtual way. Essentially, we will continue to be an efficient and dynamic firm, challenging the conventional status quo of the insurance law market
“It is with regret that we will also need to make some difficult decisions which will impact our colleagues. While we have plans in place to deal with lots of different crisis scenarios, we could never have fully known the impact this pandemic would have our business and the need to rapidly accelerate our digital strategy, transforming the way we are working.
“Usually, such transformational change would evolve over many months and even years and in turn we would manage and adapt our workforce over time.
“We are now faced with having to adapt our internal teams to reflect the way we have all been working throughout the last few months as well as the skills and resources we need, and the way in which we want to operate as a firm in the future.”
BLM employs around 1,500 people across its 13 offices, including 200 partners and 800 lawyers and technical experts.
The Bristol office is headed by Joe Wakeford, who also heads BLM’s Southampton office. It also has a presence in Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Derry, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Manchester.
The firm operates in 12 key market segments: brokers; care; construction & property; general insurance; healthcare; leisure & hospitality; Lloyds & London market; manufacturing; public sector; retail; TMT; transportation & logistics.
