Mallesons… today launched its Facebook page to help recruit law students for its forthcoming intake of summer clerks. It forms part of the firm’s active approach to using social media. The page is called ‘The Real Deal’ and allows law students to find out about the opportunities for clerkships and graduate roles and gives them an inside view into what life is like at the firm, including our people, offices, structure and what makes us different.
… Mallesons is a leading law firm in the Asian region. It creates value and manages risk by providing outstanding service to leading organisations.
But “managing risk” through the provision of an “outstanding service” was sorely missing in ‘The Real Deal’. You see, Mallesons has annexed a competition to win an iPad 2 to the launch of its Graduate Careers Page and the trouble is, to enter the competition, people visiting the page must “like” the Mallesons’ Grad Careers Page. We believe the use of Facebook functionality in this way is is a clear contravention of the Facebook Promotions Guidelines. Moreover, Clause 3 provides:
You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.
Whoops … someone forgot to manage the risk on that one!
We think Mallesons also failed to manage the risk of alienating potential grads in a recent interview between Mallesons head of P&D, Kate Rimer, and our friends at ALB. The interview gave an insight into how junior lawyers succeed at Mallesons. Here’s the funny bit: it doesn’t appear to involve much “lawyering”.
Entitled Fast -Track Your Promotion, the interview opens with the following prefatory words:
Kate Rimer says being an excellent lawyer in today’s environment is simply not enough.
Rimer continues:
“I think more and more that legal excellence or technical legal skills are a given… What our clients are telling us is valued is the ability to work with them, so it’s the client relationship skills, the business development skills, it’s the ability to work in and lead a team. So if you want to climb the ladder, if you are going to have a team of five or six lawyers working for you, how do you do that?… I hate them being called the “soft skills”, i think the client and people skills are really going to stand out the stars from the ordinary performers and that’s what we look for when we’re promoting people.”
So lots of business-development, lots of client-relations and perhaps a bit of The Facebook, but what about The Lawyering? Perhaps summer clerks should ask the following person – apparently a Mallesons employee and not a partner (yeah, right!) – when they start their summer clerkship:
Who on earth wrote that ”Mallesons: Weekend Warriors” story? There is not one junior in Australia who could claim that they work 90+ hours in a week on anything like a consistent basis. Perhaps by understanding that there are more seasoned lawyers (those having survived the staff cuts) who are charging out at a higher per hour billable rate, and there being a lower proportion of graduates in the mix (who bill out at a lower rate), the author may have been able to reach an alternative view. Tired, oh so tired, of the consistent BS that any of these Gen Y juniors put in for half of what they actually take (I too am of Gen Y ilk). Firm Spy, how about a piece on how juniors lie about how much they get paid, how much they work, their uni marks?
That’s the cultural aspect that needs debunking. If it weren’t for all the boasting and bragging (without basis) we might actually be able to feel better that we are all getting the same deal ad that there are only ever one or two ”outliers” on the salary curve who are getting a better deal than we.
Perhaps Mallesons can hope for a few more outliers in its next crop of grads. But will they be familiar with The Facebook?
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“There is not one junior in Australia who could claim that they work 90+ hours in a week on anything like a consistent basis.” – clearly your spy hasn’t worked in a busy (which doesn’t by definition mean top tier) M&A, project finance or capital markets team. This does happen on a consistent basis for some (albeit I accept not the majority). Still, it happens.
“Perhaps by understanding that there are more seasoned lawyers (those having survived the staff cuts) who are charging out at a higher per hour billable rate, and there being a lower proportion of graduates in the mix (who bill out at a lower rate), the author may have been able to reach an alternative view.” – I don’t understand this. Surviving the razor gangs doesn’t inherently make you more valuable to the firm or to its clients. Sounds like inappropriate leveraging practices to me.
“Tired, oh so tired, of the consistent BS that any of these Gen Y juniors put in for half of what they actually take (I too am of Gen Y ilk).” – maybe I’m not following because I finished work at 5am (brag, brag, boast), Gen Y put in for half of what they take? Isn’t this a good deal? Happy to be corrected.
“Firm Spy, how about a piece on how juniors lie about how much they get paid, how much they work, their uni marks?” – um instead, how about mentoring your juniors and encouraging them (and your workplace) to be open about workloads, performance expectations and the importance of team work / sharing the load instead of promoting a culture of “do the hard yards” and “shape up or ship out”?
“If it weren’t for all the boasting and bragging (without basis) we might actually be able to feel better that we are all getting the same deal ad that there are only ever one or two ”outliers” on the salary curve who are getting a better deal than we.” – This makes me think that you’re not a partner. If you had access to the salary data you’d see that there are outliers on both sides of the salary bands and at the 3 -5 PQE level there are more than a few who are being paid above and below, having regard to performance (i.e. financial) and non-performance (i.e. relationship / standing with influential people) factors.
Now excuse me while I sleep under my desk (brag, brag, boast).
That is hysterically funny. Perhaps Mallesons need to rebuild their reputation by not screwing their employees with lower wages, bullying, fabricated performance management, the list goes on…..
Other things to change is the manage up that runs rife through the place. Their latest internal ‘Vibe’ survey responded to anonymously by it’s own staff slammed the firm and it’s management.
Graduates, take the other offer.
Mallesons – ‘Hell on Earth’