First this, from an anonymous Mallesons spy:
Dear Firmspy Re: Mallesons Melb Enviro Group Withers Update Since your article 3 more lawyers have resigned from the team – 1 a new lawyer hired late in 2010 (who resigned without having another job lined up as it was so bad for her …), the 2nd a 3rd year lawyer and more recently a 2nd year lawyer (Grad intake 2009). This makes the longest serving member of the team a law graduate from the knowhow team that started in the group last August. 2 new 4th year lawyers have been hired and an SA from Sydney has returned to work Melbourne and is working a couple of days a week. Both original secretaries have left the team, one has remained at mallesons and is working in P&D the other has left the firm. A Secretary from Sydney M&A relocated and worked in the team for about 2-3 months before being relocated internally to M&A. Word is that Stephen though coming into the office more than before is still only in a few times a week and this fluctuates… He is also rarely available on mobile and disappears for hours off the email.
Sounds a bit like a bushfire has burned the Environment group to the ground. If our spy is to be believed, something is clearly wrong with the group. It sounds to us like either (1) the group doesn’t have enough work to support the number of juniors; (2) the Environment group has been instructed to become “more lean” (read: make working conditions unbearable so that people leave); or (3) there is some other issue (send us your thoughts in the comments). Whichever it is, it cannot be a good … ahem, environment for junior lawyers and support staff to forge their careers. So we sent Mallesons the following edited email, including the above tip-off in unedited form:
It sounds like things are really bad in [the Melbourne environment] group and we’re wondering why. Robert’s insightful comments in The Australian the other week got us thinking about the firm’s transition to a slicker, more deleveraged outfit, and how this might impact on the mind-set of juniors in the more “fringe” groups within the firm (like the Enviro Group).
“For firms to adapt to these changing needs they must fundamentally re-assess their approach to service delivery and their market position.”
In Mallesons’ “fundamental reassessment” of its service delivery, how much thought is being given to the aspirations of junior lawyers stuck in groups that were relevant in the “2000s … with the adoption of national models”, but which are now a relic of yesteryear? Isn’t it unfair that these young lawyers, who believed that the firm would reward their hard-work through traditional progrssion to SA and the partnership, now find themselves short-changed and in pursuit of better opportuinities elsewhere? How much responsibility does the firm take for the mental welfare of very junior employees stuck in this kind of anxiety-inducing work environment? Does the firm accept that these kinds of working conditions are highly detrimental to the mental health of employees?
We received the following response from a firm spokesperson. We thank them for having the courage to respond.
Hello FS,
Thanks for getting in touch and giving us an opportunity to respond. We, like any business, adapt our business strategy when markets change. Any changes that we make to our strategy are clearly communicated to our staff. Our national environment practice is regarded as an area of potential growth for us. It forms an important part of our sector approach and there are opportunities for progression in that area of our practice.
At Mallesons we seek to foster an environment where our staff receive strong pastoral care. We have a strong mentoring program, a dedicated Health & Wellbeing program and were one of the first firms involved in the Resilience@Law initiative which highlights the need to address depression in the legal profession. We have always been committed to developing the careers of our people and invest heavily in their training and development.
Oh, right, macro-level mental-awareness initiatives. That old chestnut. Nothing like paying a few grand to give an entire partnership a claw-back against the conduct of individual partners. The board can sign-up for a fantastic, well-intended program, can offer funding, and can win awards based on that participation. The added benefit is the micro-level carte blanche given to individual partners to pour petrol on the lush Arcadia and walk around the office with a Zippo.
A similar example can be found in Mallesons’ pretense regarding the promotion of women in the workplace. A spokesperson wrote to us (read about it here)
We invest in all our people and actively encourage and promote women in the workplace – that’s why we’ve been given the EOWA award for the 5th consecutive year…Suggesting that we are hypocritical for highlighting our EOWA award whilst not having significant female representation on our Executive Team is a cheap shot. At every level in the firm we encourage our women to thrive and succeed – 22% of the owners of the business are women. We have some of the leading lawyers in Australasia – many of them women.
But an anonymous Mallesons’ spy begs to differ:
A culture that has increasingly ignored the need to grow/change to encompass the diversity of needs of our workforce. Specifically female senior associates and partners requiring flexibility to meet family pressures. With over 60% of our graduate & junior intake being high performing women we will continue to lose top-talent to in-house or smaller firms. When I think about what I have foresaken to remain Partner to my children I want to weep. We talk up “family-friendly” hours and flexibility – it is pure spin.
What do you think? Pastoral carer and promoter of women? Or flame-throwing macro-level program participant with carte blanche to inspire workplace anguish?
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i hope the first anon mallesons spy contribution is not reflective of the quality of drafting one can expect from those guys
Firmspy, your email to Mallesons was completely over the top. This post isn’t about mental health, family friendlyness of big law firms or ‘macro-level… initiatives’, as you call them. If you’d have stuck to the topic – the apparent departure of people from a particular practice group – maybe you would have recevied an answer on topic, instead of getting the wishy-washy response that you did.
Of course, once you ask about mental health, it’s a bit of a chutzpah to complain when you get a response about mental health!
A long bow drawn FS. Missing the point completely in terms of using “mental health” & “diversity” as the triggers for the Environment Team’s demise. Comes down to either the recruits not being fit for purpose or the leadership of the team being less than satisfactory. Probably a dollar each way. Do your homework FS, Stephen Davis is highly regarded & an expert in his field. Maybe not a great people manager but think about the reverberations a bitter post like this causes. Stick to the facts for once FS
There couldn’t be a greater contrast between the Melbourne environment group and Sydney’s environment group. The Sydney environment group is well managed and attracts a lot of juniors. The partners treat their staff very well and the group has a very good culture.
Amazing what difference it makes to work with partners who give an ounce of crap.
If I had turnover of staff that was only half of this Mallie’s team I can guarantee I wouldn’t be left to manage the scraps left and continue the carnage. I suspect “some” older partners are indulged more than others for the sake of bringing in the big deals and a blind eye is turned regarding their outdated & dictatorial management styles. I’ve been on the receiving end of such a Partner & they were a protected species so I had to jump many years ago to another top-tier, best thing I’ve done for my career.
Instead of asking the Malleson’s spin doctors why not have the balls to ask Stephen Davis himself about what’s going on with his team? He deserves a right of reply don’t you reckon?
What a dud post FirmSpy. Thought you’d at least try to uncover what’s really going in in the enviro group which is the laughing stock at MSJ Melbourne office. Don’t have to throw around mental health and other guff to see it’s a dud partner getting away with being a crap manager. And he’s only one in a huge pool of appalling Partners. Nuff said
Talk about spin – “we have a strong mentoring Program”, what complete and utter bullshit. Mallesons is a sweatshop, all it cares about is getting more and more meat to push through the grinder.
Greetings FS
I would like to respond to your recent post regarding my Environment Team.
The success of our practice over the last two decades has been based on spending significant time with clients at their sites around Australia. It is the nature of the work with environmental law, because we are solving physical environmental & community issues.
That said, I’ve had a higher turnover in my team this year than I would like and am working towards changes that will achieve a better balance between time spent in the office with the team and being onsite for clients. I am old enough and ugly enough, as they say, to take on board feedback and am happy to do it.
I am proud of our team of experienced senior lawyers. I look forward to working with them to give them the opportunities they want and deserve as we continue to grow our practice even further.
Thanks again for the opportunity to comment.
Kind regards
Stephen Davis
Disagree with some of the comments above. The post shows that aside from deluvering a service to clients, law firm partners have an obligation to be humans to the people they manage. If they’re not, they should be prepared to face the sort of criticism we see in this article and the condemnation of the partnership. It seems fair enough to me – make a million dollars, but don’t be a c***
I’m getting tired of reading FirmSpy post after post obviously focused on the “plight” of junior lawyers and their constant whining over the state of top tier Firms and their career prospects. Firms do need to change and innovate to reflect ALL of the diversity in the workforce, not only Gen Y juniors who think posting their litany of whining is the way to get ahead. Really sick of this FS. And bravo to Stephen Davis for choosing to respond
Hey just read his reply. Good on the bloke for responding and being honest. It takes guts to admit you can do things better – most partners I work for wouldn’t do that in a pink fit!!! And as for travelling I wish my partner was a leader in his field (just did google on Davis) and got out of his office and into the market to get more interesting work and took me with him just once to see clients and travel! Wow that would be novel for my Partner – that team should consider themselves lucky – come work where I do at another top tier – Cla….!!
Good on him for having the guts to respond sounds like there are two sides to this one!
An honest & courageous response from Stephen Davis. Rare for a Partner of his standing to openly respond and offer some clear insights into how his Practice operates. I think it’s only fair to remember that ALL practice team members from Partner to secretary are human and can & do make mistakes. When a team isn’t operating well it affects everyone. Stephen Davis has shown some real guts in publicly addressing what was a very biased post. Someone of his calibre & exceptional standing in Australia & Asia really I’m sure has more valuable things to do with his time
Stephen Davis must be doing something right. The quotient of female blonde hotness in that team is damn high
Used to work at Mallies and it has its faults and I didn’t like it and left but watched jealously as I heard Stephen’s team going out for dinner, going to his house for themed fun dinners and they all got free weekends at his country rental house but none of the whingers are mentioning that are they! Come on FS, of all the Mallies partners to hang it on this is not the guy! You do know he has worked for past 30 years in his spare time with people with disabilities, worked with Mother Theresa and set up and runs a took-took business in Cambodia for street kids etc. Come on, he was doing pro-bono stuff before it became trendy and big firms started trading off it. Pick on some arrogant prick partner but not this guy he is a lovely man!
Nice one, “John”, and some others. Are you sure you’re really called “John” and don’t work at a place called Mal…? I think we all know who you really might be, “John”.
This is beginning to look very cash for comments. As they say, if it looks like a duck…. There has to be truth behind the comments for such mass turnover from so many different levels from secretaries, solicitors, SAs and counsels
Yeh I’d be doing my own pro-bono too if I raked in $1.5 mill per year
mallesons actively monitor firmspy – obviously all the glowing comments about this partner were written by HR.
Gee it’s pretty obvious whoever started this blog is bitter and twisted. Pity their efforts are not going towards better and respected solicitors such as Stephen Davis
In response to Anonymous above- do you really think Mallesons HR monitors and replies to FS on a Sunday???!!!! Check the date!!! Stephen Davis posted his reply on Sunday 7 and so were all the “glowing” comments!! It’s actually very sad, unprofessional and childish that so many of you lawyers feel the need to bitch, complain and backstab each other!!! It really doesn’t get you anywhere and if there really is such a thing as karma, God help you and your own careers!!!! Why don’t you just focus on your own careers, PRACTICES, new jobs and staff?????!!!!!!!!!!!!
People, please…. would an forthright, honest and trustworthy institution like Mallesons engage in such skullduggery as to actually get their HR representatives to spam posts on this article?
…surely only Clutz would sink that low?
Non Legal Eagle loves that punctuation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, Anon, it seemed necessary to get the point across! I know many of you feel the need to have the last word!
Have a good day and thanks for noticing my punctuation!
Hilarious. For a firm that banned social media until recently. The lid’s off.
Non-Legal Eagle @ 11:26,
You might have missed, however, Australia’s legal system is adversarial and lawyers are generally an adversarial bunch.
We do a lot more than “bitch, complain and backstab each other”, such as, withholding crucial documents till the 11th hour, impliedly encouraging clients to evade service, destroying crucial incriminating documents with no trace being left, and much much more.
Bitching and back stabbing? You’re not even scratching the surface.