National law firm Holding Redlich performance manages staff it hopes will quit the firm by diverting work and making employees feel they are under-performing, according to a confidential report leaked exclusively to Firm Spy.
The report (available here) is the result of “Focus Group” meetings held between May and June in the Holding Redlich Sydney office and we understand that it was recently presented to the firm’s board for consideration. Judging by the tenor of the responses, employees were asked to speak freely about issues within the firm and to offer suggestions as to how the firm can effect positive change.
The report contains the following extraodinary insight into the firm:
[Report Editor] “Obviously there are times when it is not appropriate to send out an e-mail to all staff about why someone is leaving but the following quote sums up how the majority of our staff think we handle performance management in the Sydney office and it was made by one of our star performers.”
[Star Performer] “People disappearing is worrying. There is an understanding that if you are not performing well you will be starved of work and either leave due to lack of work or be asked to leave. Worry that lack of work means you could be asked to leave. You start thinking you did something wrong and no one told you. If you are quiet and others are working hard you worry.”
To the Law Institutes and various industry bodies across Australia searching for answers about heightened levels of mental distress within the legal industry, pause for a moment to carefully consider this quote. Lawyers, who by their nature are already self-reflexive and pessimistic, suffer immeasurably heightened mental anguish precisely because of this sinister workplace strategem. Go to any law firm across the country and the first thing you’ll hear one colleague ask another in their awkward office chit-chat is “Are you busy? What are you working on?”. Little wonder, then, that nearly all lawyers suffer the paradoxical nightmare of feeling anxious when they have no work, and stressed when they have too much. But if you overlay that psychological torment with the fear that the moment you don’t have work, it could be because you’re on the start of the “starve him and get him to quit” cycle, it is no surprise we see alarmingly high levels of depression and suicide in our industry. Holding Redlich clearly has something to answer here.
On Feedback, Time in Lieu & Recognition
When you’re searching for answers as to why you might be on the precipice of the reprehensible Holding Redlich Starve Cycle, don’t go looking to your superiors for feedback:
Either nail it or miss the mark. In the middle – no follow-up. Don’t see documents before they are sent out. Have to ask for feedback but can only do this when working for people repetitively and you don’t need it as much then.”
Another Focus Group attendee said:
“Any stress is always brought on by non-communication.”
Said another:
“Only ever two all firm [Sydney] meetings and they were for redundancies. There should be firm meetings every quarter to share information. Know about financials and top deals in the firm to help cohesion and also help groups market to clients because they know what work other people do and where the knowledge is in the firm. People will generally turn up if held by Ian. Happen in July after year end to give highlights of year in the past.”
And yet another:
“Not sure who my direct manager is. Work is fairly isolated. No level of management. Good and bad. If people weren’t happy I would hear. Like the independence and flexibility. But there are sometimes when boundaries or expectations would be good to have and more feedback on that basis. Just would like a bit more involvement at a manager level to make sure I’m providing the right service to the firm.”
If feedback isn’t forthcoming, it would make it incredibly difficult for junior lawyers to ask the firm for recognition or even a day off work for all of their efforts. A junior lawyer noted:
Finish big transaction not culture of the firm to go out to a lunch to celebrate. Doesn’t have to be a big lunch or celebration but just a team luch to celebrate and increase morale.
If a paltry lunch is too much to ask, staff can forget about getting time-in-lieu (how would they broach the topic anyhow, given the lack of communication?):
Flexibility was again mentioned as a meaningful way to recognise staff either “a day in lieu” if the staff member has had a really big month and exceeded budget or perhaps even an afternoon off, if the staff member has worked a number of weekends in a row. Staff are aware that some staff are currently offered this but again it is not firm wide and this is unfair.
On Billable Units & Salary Reviews
Ze secrets, zey cannot be disclosed!
A fundemtnal part of being a qualified lawyer is regular attendance at training and CLE-type events. Apparently this isn’t something which is facilitated by the working conditions at Holding Redlich:
All staff felt that Partners / Managers were very encouraging when it came to attending training courses on the whole but you still need to “make up time at the end of the day if you attend a training session for half day. Budget relief needed. Would feel fully supported by that!”"
If lawyers don’t “make up” the time lost on training, it is a sure bet that they’ll be underwhelmed in their next salary review. However, the utter opacity of the firm’s salary review calculations makes this unclear:
No transparency in salary reviews. May have met or exceeded budget or been on secondment and not made budget. No idea throughout the year what is happening and where they are at. No one knows how salary reviews are calculated and if billable hours reflect it or not. Told performance appraisal doesn’t feed into salary calculation. Some way of having an effect on your salary rather than just plodding along and hoping everything is okay if you are not told.”
On GFC Cutbacks & Precedents
“Support staff are also frustrated by the lack of resourcing available to them. They understand that this is largely a hangover of the GFC but now that their workloads are picking up and no one is communicating the strategy moving forward they are feeling demotivated by the lack of recognition.”
The same story of a lack of resources also appears to plague Holding Redlich’s precedent bank, or lack thereof:
“Let down by lack of precedents. Firm doesn’t buy into commitment to precedents (not [sic] precedent manager). … Greater buy in [sic] from partners to endeavour to have more consistent agreements, better boilerplate and a clause bank. Different precedents or documents in other offices. Inconsistency between offices. Effects [sic] people coming here laterally as precedents aren’t great. Larger firms great [sic] precedents. Nothing for grads etc to follow when drafting. Need basic precedents junior lawyers need to use eg letters.”
This guy clearly needs some quality precedents, lest the firm’s agreements be littered with grammatical errors!
On Holding Redlich’s “Values”
Given the parlous state of Holding Redlich described above, it should come as little wonder that the firm’s employees grapple with the idea that the firm espouses “values”:
“Most staff were aware that we had values but were unable to name them. A few people thought they might be framed and “on the wall at the top of stairs” but weren’t sure if they might have that confused with the client service standards.”
For the apparently ignorant staffers reading, some of the values Holding Redlich has published on its website are:
We aim to achieve a high level of ethical behaviour … We recognise that our staff are our most important asset and we aim to provide employment which is challenging, satisfying and enjoyable. We aim to create a safe and environmentally responsible working environment in which:
- the contribution of every individual is valued;
- our staff have the opportunity to develop;
- the need for our staff to balance their work responsibilities with other responsibilities, including family, is recognised and respected;
- discrimination and harassment are not tolerated in any circumstance; and
- a diversity of people are welcome.
We’ll let you draw your own conclusion as to how true Holding Redlich is remaining to its values.
Conclusion
Consistent with our policy this year of emailing firms and asking for comment pre-publication, we emailed Holding Redlich yesterday with several questions (unedited email below). We received no reply, which didn’t surprise us. It sounds to us like Holding Redlich is one of a number of corporate Australian partnerships with a workplace that has the potential to detrimentally impact the psychological welfare of its non-partnership staff. In an era when documents can easily be leaked to sites like Firm Spy, or single individuals can loudly broadcast their views to a (sometimes immense) social media readership, these corporate partnerships must recognise that the time to change is now. By holding the Focus Group Meeting and considering the report it produced, Holding Redlich at least appears to be heading in the right direction.
Mental health of lawyers is a pressing industry issue. While it is true that there is a surfeit of law graduates and a seemingly endless supply of people willing to work in places like Holding Redlich, this does not absolve its partners from acceding to the strictures of common decency. This is especially the case when one considers the vast riches that our industry has earned them. Firm Spy will continue to work hard to provide transparency that pressures corporate partners to change anachronistic workplace mentalities.
Email Sent to Holding Redlich
——- Original Message ——–
Subject: URGENT: Request for Comment
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:37:01 -0400
From: news@firmspy.com
To: hris.lovell@holdingredlich.com.au, paul.venus@holdingredlich.com.au, ian.robertson@holdingredlich.com.au, lou.farinotti@holdingredlich.com.au, peter.redlich@holdingredlich.com.au, clarence.kunnel@holdingredlich.com.au
Cc: inquiries@holdingredlich.com.auMorning partners,
We’re publishing a large feature post on Holding Redlich tomorrow and
would like to offer you the chance to have some input. Here are some
questions we would like to receive your views/comments on:
- does HR have a time-in-lieu policy? If so, when does it kick in? How
many days must a person work before becoming entitled to a day in lieu?- are lawyer salaries in any way related to, or benchmarked
retrospectively against, the lawyer’s utilisation?- does HR force lawyers attending CLE sessions to work longer office hours
to offset the time spent ensuring they meet the requirements to maintain
their practising certificates?- does HR have a secret strategy of refusing to give work to employees who
it wants to leave the firm? If so, how does the firm think this behaviour
fits within Holding Redlich’s published values, and, more broadly, the
industry imperative to create workplaces that don’t detrimenentally affect
the psychological welfare of employees?We suggest you cancel the rest of your plans today and work hard on these
responses (which we require by 8pm Eastern Standard Time. Tomorrow is
shaping as a dark day in the history of the firm.Regards,
FS
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FS, are you overplaying your hand with this one? This is a “focus group report” not a policy manual. It’s also pretty lightweight – starting with citing the Harvard Business Review as authority for the proposition that if you don’t look after employees they will leave. Duh!
What are some other fundemtnal parts of being a qualified lawyer?
Short of sworn evidence, you’re unlikely to get a more candid snapshot of life in s firm than through a report like this. Don’t see how firmspy can be seen to be overplaying their hand here. The cynical modus operandi of starving employees of work and playing on their insecurities is something you’ll find at many firms, including mine. It is a ridiculously childish and potentially dangerous way to performance manage. Excellent job by firmspy for bringing attention to it
All, not just law, firms, do this. Doesn’t make it ethical as far as employees go, but this just how firms operate.
Ideally, management would communicate better and work with staff who are ‘under performing’. Not sure why this is too much to ask.
It’s not like the employees of law firms are dumb and beyond help, so why can’t firms be honest and upfront instead of being passive aggressive and withholding work?
Is it the cost? The time? The effort? Or perhaps all three?
A dark day in the history of the firm? Pah-lease! Nobody likes negative press, but lets keep it real here please.
@ Anonymous 9:53am
According to the Law Council of Australia’s Solicitor’s Conduct Rules, some of the “fundamental duties of solicitors” are:
4.1.2 – A solicitor must be honest and courteous in all dealings in the course of legal practice.
4.1.4 – A solicitor must avoid any compromise with their integrity.
5.2 – A solicitor must not engage in conduct, in the course of practice or otherwise, which is likely to a material degree to bring the profession into disrepute
This so-called era of “Web 2.0″ is proving excellent at opening windows into the profession that have for too long remained closed. I expect that, at a not too distant future time, we’ll see a real industry push toward the work/life balance that existed in my day. While I read that Web 2.0 is partly responsible for the creeping intrusion of work into the time supposedly reserved for family and friends, perhaps it will prove both the cause and the cure of the deepening unrest at the lower industry echelons. Perhaps people will finally feel empowered to stand up for themselves.
Looking at the profiles of staff at the Holding Redlich’s website, I’d say the biggest problem at this firm is the complete absence of any ethnic diversity.
Holding Redlich care about their staff enough to ask them what they think about the place. They get that and you guys publish it as a negative? Every firm has issues like this, and no matter what you do when you put a bunch of intelligent people together they are going to have differences of opinion. FS is becoming embarrassing by its negativity and apparent desire to aim up and flatten anyone who gets leaked to it. How about you guys show some actual journalistic ability than anonymous bagging of people?
And this crap in your demand to HR:-
We suggest you cancel the rest of your plans today and work hard on these
responses (which we require by 8pm Eastern Standard Time. Tomorrow is
shaping as a dark day in the history of the firm.
…is nothing but the bullying you seem to rail so heavily against online.
@ You’ve got to be kidding
1) Point taken re: the demand to the HR partnership. We find we need to enforce relatively short response deadlines because in the past firms have gone to friendlier media to 1) give them the “story”; and 2) have it told in a much more favourable way. We never used to give firms the opportunity to have a say, but now we’re aiming to be more responsible, albeit in our own way. We have never professed to have any “journalistic ability” – we aren’t journalists. This is a blog site.
2) Re: HR “caring enough” about staff to “ask them what they think of the place” – this is actually the kind of twisted logic that we’re “railing heavily against online”. Have a close look at the selected HR “values” we republished from the HR website. Partners shouldn’t think it is some grand gesture on their part to ask staff what they think about the workplace – it is nothing more than being decent and human towards those below who, with the benefit of leverage, so vastly enrich the partners themselves. Being decent toward, and respectful of, someone who is making you alot of money doesn’t seem like a big deal to us.
3) Re: us publishing the Focus Groups as a “negative” – it is true that HR seeking to address issues within the firm is a good thing. However, we are cynical enough to believe that it was prompted by the perceived impact that employee disenchantment is having on the firm’s profitability. Also, playing on someone’s insecurities so they’ll quit the firm is a big deal to us and many people within the legal industry. We believe law firm partners at firms like Holding Redlich, making six and seven figure salaries, have a responsibility to the profession not to engage in this kind of morally derelict behaviour. We can actually see the day where a court, considering whether to cancel a lawyer’s practising certificate for fudging a timesheet, will find that lawyer’s supervising partner guilty of an equitable wrong for creating and profiting from this kind of sick working environment.
4) Re: every firm having issues like this. This is true. Hence our post and the statement that partners need to change the mentality that you can treat staff like garbage without any sort of backlash.
5) Re: our anonymity – The Australian Financial Review wrote the following about our site (12/7): “most uncomfortable of all for those who may have something to hide, no one knows the identity of Firm Spy”. We think as long as we remain anonymous, all corporate firm partners will feel some sense of unease about engaging in the kind of behaviour exposed in this post. We believe this is a good thing.
Two things Firm Spy:
First – “We suggest you cancel the rest of your plans today and work hard on these
responses (which we require by 8pm Eastern Standard Time. Tomorrow is
shaping as a dark day in the history of the firm.” >>> Legendary!
Second – “Go to any law firm across the country and the first thing you’ll hear one colleague ask another in their awkward office chit-chat is “Are you busy? What are you working on?”” >>> Another of my favourites is the: “have you hit 7 billables yet?”
Great post. Why do management in law firms tend to act passive aggressive etc? The law attracts people who lack management skills and when they become partner they act that way because they get away with it. Not a healthy environment for people to work in. I do hope as the new guard come in things improve and people are treated decently
The firm didn’t run the focus group because they care about their people, they ran it because they care about their bottom line.
While the report is far from scientific, it was not simply prepared by disgruntled employees but by the firm themselves.
The failures brought to light by this report are not unique to Holding but I can say (through experience) they are true of Holding.
Exactly the same thing at PKF, PWC and Deloitte! Crap abt how much time u charge clients and how u shouldn’t bill all the time to that client… Then rubbish on TOIL. You claim 5hrs but they only approve 1.. It’s disgusting!
I worked at Holding Redlich for 2 years – everything above rings true to the two years experience I had at the firm. Holding Redlich is an inefficient, disorganised workplace with no internal communication mechanisms and no employee support. The partner I worked for was more concerned with getting regular foils in his hair than engaging in any kind of mentoring or development with the juniors in our team.