Freehills has apparently frozen pay for its legal staff, who are naturally irate.
Whereas Allens took the comparatively modest steps of sacking the tea-ladies and cancelling the Christmas party, today Freehills Chief Managing Partner Gavin Bell took revolutionary steps, saying:
we’ve introduced a salary freeze and, secondly, we’ve extended a number of flexible work options that we already had in place that were extended to address the global financial crisis… the GFC hasn’t hit us hard [but we took this measure] to be in a position to deal with it proactively as it happened.
The Firm Spy has received a number of insider reports which throw doubt on the reasons behind the pay freeze:
If it has not hit the firm yet — something which accords with perceptions held by almost all lawyers here — then why the pressing need to freeze our wages? If it never ‘hits’ will the partners pay us extra?
Adding to the self-righteous futy of Freehills’ lawyers, Bell and the Freehills partnership recently commented that the firm was in excellent shape. This latest revelation suggests that the firm either ‘misunderestimated’ the impact of the GFC or that something funny is going on.
Was freeze was premature? Will other firms follow suit in this July’s salary review season? Send us your thoughts!
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