A few weeks ago we turned the Firm Spy spotlight onto the Mallesons’ non-partner headcount reduction for FY2010. Quite remarkably, the firm shed 227 staff in the last financial year, netting a reduction of non-partner fee-earner headcount of 21.2%. This figure of 227 lawyers is more than double the number of lawyers who, according to Mallesons‘ comments in the AFR at the time, took part in the firm’s voluntary redundancy program.
Strange that there were more lawyers who apparently chose to leave the firm for FREE than those who accepted a healthy redundancy payout, don’t you think?
We certainly smelled a rat; we think it is more likely that pressure was placed on underperformers to leave the firm following the voluntary redundancy scheme. Underperformers might not have signed up for the scheme, but were later frozen out, or asked to sign confidential agreements to leave the firm. This view is substantially buttressed by the following comments (the veracity of which we cannot confirm) we received in response to the post (NB – we think “VRP” is a reference to the firm’s “voluntary redundancy program”):
…many staff at Mallesons were taken into private meetings prior to the VRP and, it is very widely speculated, invited to accept confidential payments to leave the firm. This process continued for several months until (again, it is widely speculated) it was determined by the partnership that headcount wasn’t being reduced quickly and sharply enough. Hence the VRP.
While the VRP offer was open, some SAs were reminded how hard it would be to become a partner and also informed that the partnership wouldn’t be expanding for the foreseeable future, only replacing retiring partners. This has created a farcical shortfall in SAs across the firm.
Sure, some applicants for the VRP were rejected. This is true. But these were the valued employees, the majority of whom remain with the firm. Many of those employees are cynical enough to believe that the VRP was just a device to allow the partnership to accept the redundancy applications of the underperformers whilst availing to partners the very believable hedge against the departures of high-performers that “business needs require you to stay”.
And as for the non-performers who didn’t volunteer for the VRP? Well, they were very recently on the receiving end of incredibly harsh performance reviews and will probably face the old fashion “freeze-out” technique in the months ahead.
Not only has the drastic reduction in headcount created what our anonymous spy termed a “farcical shortfall” of senior associates across the firm, but it is also rumoured to have given rise to the ridiculous situation in which a number of ex-employees continue to appear in the firm’s graduate recruitment propaganda paraphernalia.
This from an anonymous ex-Mallesons spy earlier in the week (thanks for the courage you have shown in sending this to us!):
I was one of several Mallesons employees who was very conscientiously and convincingly encouraged by my partner and HR to “consider options outside the firm” during the height of the GFC. This message was conveyed to me in the same interview in which I was advised that my performance was not tracking with firm expectations (news that came to my horror and astonishment). Like many others I suspect, I took the hint and soon left the firm. This would all be fine, except my image is still splattered across the firm’s recruitment material and website, along with many others who have since left the firm, possibly also in similar circumstances. Presumably the firm doesn’t want to use a “managed-out” precedent to lure the nation’s brightest, but unwitting graduates?
No, presumably not.
Interestingly, in a graduate advertising brochure featured on its website (available here) under the heading “What We Value”, Mallesons informs “… being honest with our people”. But if it is true there is a raft of people who appear on the firm’s website and in its shiney brochures that are no longer with the firm, Mallesons probably isn’t being very “honest with our people”.
Does your firm have ex-employees on its website? Were you managed-out of a law firm? If so, tell us.
Send the Firm Spy your news and views!
Loading...
I left kpmg in Feb of this year, my profile is still up on their website under their ‘meet our people’ section.
There has clearly been a big cull of staff, and grad recruitment is down. There has been a gradual exit of partners and there are more to leave. MSJ is being slimmed down again. How long will the Canberra office last?
Hunt & Hunt are still plugging training I developed (before they sacked me) on their website. Legal, but disingenuous, advertising the expertise of someone they kicked out.