AAR Loses Head (Count) After Short Jab, Upper Cut & Knockout Blow

In a fistful of cinematic scenes that won’t soon be forgotten, boxing underdog Rocky Balboa took viewers  literally step  by step through the elaborate training regimen that prepared him for his celebrated bout with Apollo Creed in 1976′s triple-Oscar-winning masterpeice Rocky. Set against the classic track “Gonna Fly Now”, Rocky Balboa rounded out these training efforts  by sprinting up the 72 stone steps leading into the Philidelphia Museum of Art, before shadow-boxing at the top of those stairs.

the knockout blow

Those steps, now colloquially known as the “Rocky Steps”, are something of a Philidelphian tourist attraction, with WIkipedia noting:

Tourists and local residents often mimic Rocky’s famous climb, a metaphor for an underdog or an everyman rising to a challenge.

Just like Rocky in that epochal moment, the Firm Spy was literally punching the air as we read the pugilistic  brilliance of Hannah Low in her AFR article last Friday (the same article we spoke about yesterday). From the perspective of Allens Arthur Robinson, Low’s journalism can best be described as a short jab, an upper-cut, and then a knockout blow.

The Short Jab

Low starts by giving a quick, punchy overview of corporate Australia over the last year and the kind of utterly reprehensible behaviour that floored juniors workers across major firms:

The credit crunch saw a squeeze in head count… Insiders say that the phenomenon of “freezing” lawyers out – where a solicitor is not given any work from a supervising partner and is unable to meet billing targets as a result – was rife in the profession last year. The focus on “performance managing” employees out was a convenient alternative for firms who didn’t want to announce formal redundancies to the market.

For those judging this bout from outside the ring, you’ll recall that Allens Arthur Robinson did announce a “voluntary” redundancy scheme last year. However, we received a spate of anonymous tips from Allens spies that questioned the voluntariness of those redundancies.

The Upper Cut

Low then proceeds to land a punch flush on the chin of AAR, highlighting a glaring discrepancy between redundancy figures reported in the firm’s formal redundancy program and massive additional losses to fee-earner head count outisde the redundancy program:

Allens Arthur Robinson cast off 114 staff under it’s voluntary redundancy program, but only a third were lawyers. But the AFR Partnership Survey reveals that the firm’s full time lawyer head count plummeted from 947 in January 2009 to 839 in January 2010, a fall of 11.4 per cent.

So if the voluntary redundancy program only netted a reduction of approximately 35 fee-earners, how else did AAR manage to reduce head count by a remarkable 73 (approx) additional lawyers? If, hypothetically, the rumours we reported that some of the “voluntary” redundancies were actually involuntary, it could be that as few as, say, 25 fee-earners truly volunteered to partake in the AAR voluntary redundancy program. In those circumstances, it would seem tremendously odd that some 300% MORE lawyers would soon thereafter voluntarily opt to depart the firm but without a redundancy payment. In boxing terms, this would amount to a monumental upset.

The Knockout Punch

But no modern-day boxer – not even Rocky Balboa in his momentous return to the ring in 2006′s Rocky Balboa – can win a fight without a knockout punch. And so, having found the firm vulnerable after exposing the very peculiar statistics above, Low connected with a right-hook to AAR’s jaw:

Allens has previously said that performance reviews are not being used as redundancy by stealth, but lawyers at the firm say that is not the case. One lawyer says staff were told the firm was locked into its lease and the only factor that could be adjusted was people. Many Allens lawyers were called into a meeting with their partner only to be presented with a resignation letter and told to go now with a payout, or be pushed later with no payout, the lawyer says. He cannot reveal his identity because in order to receive the payout, he had to sign a deed of release promising he would not leak any information about the firm, “and if we did, they would hunt us out and sue us”, he says. The difference of 70 lawyers between the 108 lost by the firm last calendar year and the 38 or so that are accounted for under the voluntary redundancy program, was done by “stealth”, the lawyer says.

The Ten-Count

Of course, every fallen giant will try to rise from the canvas. Ivan Drago, for example – the  imposing Russian boxer  played by Dolph Lungren in Rocky IV who boasted a super-punch of 1850psi – tried valiantly, though unsuccessfully, to regain his footing in the 15th round against Rocky. Here, so too does AAR spokesman Chris Fogarty. But could the referee rouse AAR prior to the ten-count?

… Allens spokesman Chris Fogarty says the difference is simply lawyers leaving the firm for local and international roles because the jobs market has picked up. He maintains that turnover “remains at decade low levels” and says the anonymous claims are a mix of complete fabrication and deliberate misrepresentation.

Sorry Chris, but a lightweight is no match for a heavyweight “rising to a challenge”. One, two, TEN!

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