Very regrettably, we have heard little gossip from Baker & McKenzie in recent months. A quick check of our records shows that after a flurry of posts about the firm in mid-2009, nothing has been reported.

partners get into the promise zone

We therefore heartily welcomed the following comments sent by an anonymous Bakers spy last night:

Baker & McKenzie imposed salary freezes across the board in July 2009. Even before that, for the first half of 2009, they froze the pay of junior lawyers who were meant to come off the lock step after 2 years of work, even though their charge out rates went up. All other juniors were also frozen on the lock step they were on at the time of the freeze.

All of this effectively means that there are now second, third and fourth year lawyers who grew up with B&M who are getting paid peanuts. As you can imagine, there are a lot of digruntled juniors at firm. Since then, the firm has announced that the pay freeze will be lifted in July 2010 with pay increases back-dated to April 2010 (i.e. a lump sum payment in July for increases in pay which technically came into effect in April 2010). A very sneaky way of locking in staff until at least July 2010. But that’s not all, they have told disgruntled staff that they can expect pay rises of 5-20% (in the case of juniors, 2-15%). That’s no where near market esp, for juniors who have come off the lock step.

It is an almost incredible proposition that in the case of junior lawyers, a pay-rise of up to 15% would still not place them on market salary rates. However, Bakers partners are paid in US dollars, so the appreciation of the AUD against the greenback (the value of the AUD against the USD has grown by about 21% this financial year) has likely made these tightwad partnership antics more necessary.

What is more troubling however - and this is not the first time we have seen this - is the rumoured representation made by the Bakers partners that pay will be lifted and the apparent rhetoric that “we will do the right thing by you” come end of financial year. These opaque promises - an absolutely essential partnership tactic - create false impressions in employees that their justifiable hopes for a particular percentage rise will be met by the partnership. Our preliminary view is that partners will leave expectant lawyers disappointed, both at Bakers and elsewhere, all the while paying those staff at undervalue for the months leading up to July. We agree that this is “a very sneaky way of locking in staff until at least July 2010”.

If your firm is making hollow or opaque promises about how your pay will move in July 2010, we want to know about it.

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

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