Last year, Mallesons headcount underwent a major contraction following its redundancy scheme. According to BRW, in FY 2009/2010, Mallesons booted a total of 13.1% of its workforce, moving employee headcount to 1600. At the time of the huge employee loss, we speculated that the firm had cut too many employees too late.
Well, we’re hearing rumours that the firm might agree with us – a redundant secretary was apparently recently re-hired. An anonymous Mallesons spy asserts:
Mallesons maintained a non re-hire policy for those staff who participated in their Voluntary Redundancy Program. It would seem exceptions are being made with their new Night WP supervisor being a former secretary that took VRP and worked in their Tax Group. Other staff, who had applied for other positions have been advised of that policy.
Hmmm… we hope Mallesons is being cautious with re-hirings in respect of redundant workers…
Meanwhile, we read last week that Clayton Utz had poached Mallesons native title expert Damian Gardiner. There is apparently a bit more going on in the firm’s Environment group than just this departure. According to an anonymous Mallesons source:
Mallesons news – interested to note your story re: Sparke Helmore employment group. You should do the same analysis of the Mallesons Environment and Planning team in Melbourne, ”lead” by serial absentee Stephen Davis. There has been a huge exodous from that group over the last 12 months, losing a senior SA, Special Counsel, about to lose some more people and they could not get a graduate for the third rotation from the 2010 grad pool so they had to get a first rotation grad to rotate through instead…. It is a group about which there is a lot of doubt over its future!!! And people considering going there need to be warned as there is a lot of disenchantment in the group at the moment following the recent departure of a respected senior SA!!
This doesn’t sound good for the firm’s environment group at all. Is your boss playing golf while you bill units?
Send the Firm Spy your news and views!
UPDATE: In fairness to Mr Davis, we have received a flurry of messages of support for him personally and more broadly for the Environment Group. Fresh off the group’s involvement in the Royal Commission into the Victorian Bushfires, we’re informed that the group is ahead of its budget and is very much a going concern. The same informants have also thrown their support behind Mr Davis personally, suggesting that instead of having beers on donning striped pants and hitting the greens, he is out meeting with clients and generating work like any competent partner. The people who contacted FS expressly requested that we refrain from quoting them directly; apparently Mallesons is very heavy-handed when it comes to FS-related correspondence.
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Surprise, surprise. Mallesons once again doing a back flip on their own policies and changing the rules to suit themselves.
Not the first time and certainly not going to be the last. I know of one ex-employee who was right royally shafted. The position was abolished after more than two years, another lesser role created. Redundancy wasn’t mentioned and when requested was refused. To add insult to injury, the employee was then performance managed and bullied until they gave up and left.
despite the way MSJ treats its staff (much worse than any of the other big firms), all the law students are still lining up to work for them
I’m very happy that an update was posted in defence of Stephen Davis and his team! There are always two sides to a story and I am positive that the original post was not a fair and justified one!
Pretty disappointing FS – personally targetted gossip can have a fairly negative impact on the reputation of the said Partner and group. I’m all in favour of exposing the truth however in this case, it was clear that this was a personal vendetta and mud does stick. Expect better from FS – the update was half-baked at best. An apology would have been the best option