We are reliably informed that in sporting parlance, the first day of this working week is known in AFL circles as “Mad Monday”. It is a day fabled for the Bacchanalian indulgences of players from the less successful clubs of the AFL . Dress-ups, booze and general frivolity are but the norm. On this day two years ago, for example, a celebratory Brendon Fevola “paraded outside a city bar in a nightie with a sex toy protruding from his pants” (for footage of the event, click here).
But while Fev occupied himself with a giant dildo and Ben Cousins probably spent this day Travis Tucking into his first bag of “bye-bye-urine-tests”, we think it was a very different kind of Monday madness which gripped top-tier law firm Mallesons earlier this week. Not only did the firm have to digest the reference made in Friday’s News article (read by half of corporate Australia) that the firm is “run like a prison farm”, but it was also forced to endure the galling task of reading the BRW Top 500 Private Companies.
It was far from cause to celebrate.
The BRW revealed that in the last financial year, Mallesons revenue dropped by 10.5%; a drop-kick trajectory that would see the firm fold like Fitzroy within a handful of years. Not even Clayton Utz, a firm we recently characterised as being on the precipice of nuclear meltdown, could come within a 50m-arc of Mallesons. Clutz posted a revenue decline of 9.7%.
However, both Clutz and Mallesons stood in stark contrast to other top-tier firms:
- Blake Dawson revenue declined by 3.5%;
- Freehills revenue declined by 3%;
- Allens Arthur Robinson revenue (based on BRW estimates) appears to have grown by approx 2%; and
- Minter Ellison revenue grew by 2%
So powerful was this shirt-front that Mallesons has tumbled from its position as Australia’s largest firm by revenue, losing that premiership flag to Minter Ellison by $8.6m. And while Clutz’s fall is explicable by a number of umpire reports (in particular the loss of key partners to A&O), we cant think of any such excuse that is available for Mallesons.
If there are no excuses, what next?
When football fans perceive that their club is underperforming, invaribaly it results in the sacking of the coach. But what happens when a law firm isn’t performing?
Fortunately, Chief Executive Partner Robert MIlliner has already considered the prospect of life after Mallesons, making the following comments to BRW in July of this year:
Post-Mallesons Plan: “I won’t go back into practice – I’ll go and do something different… I wouldn’t mind another executive role – it’s a question of what’s available. I was thinking about doing a few boards and a few people have said to me, oh, you’re too young – young in the sense that I should do a full-time executive role first.”
In relation to the “question of what’s available”, do you think opportunities will open up for the coach that has taken his team from premiership glory to … wooden-spooner-in-waiting?
Send the Firm Spy your news and views!
Loading...
Will Milliner about to embark on 2 months sabbatical leave and sources reveal the firm is paying for a course at Oxford, one wonders how much longer he will remain at the top of the tree?
Revenues down? Lots of belt tightening coming and who know, perhaps another round of redundancies?
Budgets will be slashed and one must ponder the survival of their inhouse email archiving system that costs them millions every year to develop when there are other products that work better and cost a fraction of their annual investment.
The massive drop in revenue may explain the pathetic salary increases handed out and why several of the best mid level lawyers in the firm have left or are in the process of leaving for greener pastures. However, these figures should take into account the fact Mallesons has lost over 100 fee earners in the past 12-18 months… It is becoming another meltdown ala Clutz in the 90s. It will be no surprise when Freehills, which pays the best and treats its employees comparitively well for a top tier firm, takes over from MSJ as the leading firm. MSJ needs to learn it isn’t about marketing mumbo jumbo, having massive IT support features (including spending $$$ developing programs lawyers never use when the programs they need don’t work properly) or a bunch of non-work garbage, it is about having the best lawyers and encouraging them to work to their potential. That means making them happy with pay rises that ensure they stay and work with clients. The number of clients complaining about being passed from lawyer to lawyer as people bail is increasing massively. MSJ beware – the fall of the empire is near!
Warlock Milliner is doing the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.
The inhouse filing system is a joke. Constantly crashing and users having to wait forever to get to their filed e-mail. Word is that Mallesons is beta testing the product while it gets adjusted and delivered to a couple of firms based in the USA who are licensing the software.