Plenty of chatter lately about the recent unblocking of Firm Spy by Mallesons. As we reported two weeks ago, the Powers That Be agreed that the ban was counter-productive and amounted to denying their staff access to a potential source of industry and client news. You’ll recall that access to Firm Spy was blocked either the day before (says Mallesons) or on the afternoon of (says us) our controversial post last year profiling purportedly anaemic pay-rises of non-partnership staff.
One Mallesons employee had the following comment to make about that post:
This story is 100% true. Mallesons has been absolute pricks to the 3-4 year lawyers, even myself who billed over 140% of budget (fully recovered) for the Financial Year. That’s right 40% over a 6.5 hour per day budget and I get a bonus of 11k and a payrise of 11k that still puts me 15k+ below Freehills and 30-40k below what mid tiers are paying to poach good staff. Under the bonus scheme you must be employed on 15 July (pay day) to receive your bonus i.e. you can’t have resigned – FirmSpy should watch for the wave of resignations that come post 15 July.
Another staffer made the following insightful comment:
For the hours I worked this year I would get paid more working at Maccas.
Another lamented:
our remuneration does not reflect the effort. I billed in recovered fees over 800k last year and got paid a bit over 10% of that.
Wow, $80k as compensation for billing over $800,000? That has all the hallmarks of the Shine Lawyers paralegal “profit centers” that so attracted the ire of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of QLD. But at least Mallesons lawyers can say that they worked at (insert posh accent) “Mallesons”, right? According to one commentator:
Mallesons, like other top tier firms, trade off the name to ensure there is a steady supply of keen, bright graduates and juniors looking to get excellent training before heading off to better opportunities. Mid-tier firms can’t rely on such a constant stream and so need to pay high market rates to attract and retain.
Except… Mr Milliner is conducting the Symphony of Destruction and the “steady supply of keen, bright graduates” is waivering (another story on Mallesons that was published during the blocking). You’ll recall that the FS blocking subsequently attracted the attention of News.com.au, which ran a feature article on our site and the firms that blocked it.
Well, we recently asked Mallesons about the utility of blocking our site when every decent lawyer (and accountant, for that matter) in the country has either a smart phone or an iPad. It makes no sense – thousands of our readers have the FS iPhone App. Mallesons’ head of communications came back to us and said:
I hope that you will be pleased to hear that we are, in the next two weeks, giving our staff access to FirmSpy and other sites. We’ve recently reviewed our approach to social media and agree with you that not allowing our staff access to informative and increasingly popular sites is unhelpful… This reflects a broader change in the way that both us and other professional services firms see social media. The change … will come into effect shortly.
Informative and increasingly popular? Shucks, thanks Mallesons. We’ve been spending most our lives living in a gangster’s paradise when all along we could have just come to GPT for a good night’s rest!
We can now confirm that Firm Spy is back in Mallesons offices. Let’s hope it stays that way.
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It was AllensGate that unblocked it – too much news and fun to miss
Make no bones about it though, if a Mallesons firmspy posts or emails FS from their work computer, the powers that be *will* know about it
Anyone who wants to look at FS already does so on phone or home computer or internet cafe. Pretty much everyone at a big firm has a look, especially when their own firm is the subject. ‘Blocking’ is just silly and makes the blocker look like the Chinese government.
I’m at one of those dastardly mid tier poachers … where you’re required to bill 7.0 hours a day for no bonus and where home-growns are certainly not getting the 30k-40k uplift being offered to laterals moving down from further up the ladder.
It’s not always a life of leisure at the bottom of the tier. Thankfully the overseas job market has re-opened … hello exit door.
“$80k as compensation for billing over $800,000″ speaks more to MSJ over-charging for junior lawyers (with a dash of over-working in there too) than for anything else.
This isn’t New York. No one promises $160+ on graduation. You have to deal with it or move on because MSJ will never change its remuneration practices. Policies may change, but practices won’t.
@kate hear hear!
The site may no longer be blocked, but I can guarantee that big brother is watching.
What other firms out there put an automatic diviersion on nominated email addresses to stop you contacting staff other than HR?
I urge those trapped not to check firmspy using Mallies internet connection. Mallesons monitors every lawyers use of the internet and where a person posts on firm spy claiming to be from Mallesons they do whatever they can to identify said person. They also monitor the internal messaging system lawyers use. This is very much a case of big brother watching.
@Skippy
Nobody sane would use any work phone or computer to post on FirmSpy – passive browsing only.
You’d have to be as mad as a cut snake to post on firmspy from work.
I hear that Facebook is back too..
@Thor,
Yes, Facebook, Youtube and web based emails (hotmail, gmail) can now be accessed
at Mallesons.
At HWL Ebsworth I was $30k underpaid (3-4 year lawyer).
First year of serivce – achieved 160% of budget. At the end of financial year, I received a $3k payrise (no reason, no negotiation). Was told I would get another review in six months.
Six month review – Was told I wasn’t “performing” (despite exceeding budget) so wouldn’t get a further pay review.
Three months after the six month review – Told I was fantastic and would get a better rise next time.
Three months after that – $2.5k rise. (and the partner delivered it with a smile on her face expecting a ‘thank you’).
I am a former employee.
This has not only happened to me. I worked on a level where every three months a bunch of new faces appeared and the familiar ones disappeared. I didn’t understand why for a while.