Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Clifford Chance LLP, the world’s largest law firm by revenue, will reduce its partnership ranks under a restructuring plan designed to combat the financial crisis that has hobbled U.K. law firms’ biggest clients.

The restructuring plan will be reviewed by the firm over the coming weeks, Clifford Chance said in a statement today. The firm has asked partners to contribute 60 million pounds ($87 million), about 150,000 pounds each, and said it would cut as many as 80 lawyers in London and 26 in the U.S.

Clifford Chance, which has more than 600 partners, is one of several U.K. law firms that is cutting costs or raising cash in the midst of a recession. Linklaters LLP, the second-largest London law firm by revenue, said last month it would cut as many as 120 salaried lawyers and up to 150 support staff.

The Lawyer, a trade magazine, reported that as many as 70 partners at Linklaters could be fired and 10 percent of associates, predominantly in western Europe.

Eversheds LLP, a London-based firm with about 2,000 lawyers, is withholding quarterly profit drawings to partners as a response to the decline.

“To achieve the firm’s strategic objectives we need to reflect the changes we see in our clients’ businesses today and invest in those areas that we believe will be important to them and to us tomorrow,” Clifford Chance Managing Partner David Childs said in the statement.

Clifford Chance advises some of the world’s largest banks, and clients have included Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Barclays Plc, Banco Santander SA, and bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Dozens of U.S.-based law firms have also trimmed attorney and staff ranks in the past 15 months, many in structured-finance and capital-markets practices. Those firms include New York-based Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP and White & Case LLP and Palo Alto, California-based Cooley Godward Kronish LLP. The San Francisco-based law firms Thelen LLP and Heller Ehrman LLP and New York’s Thacher Proffitt & Wood LLP shut down from a lack of work.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lindsay Fortado in New York at lfortado@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 4, 2009 11:17 EST