The Age & Post-Script To Our Interview With Mallesons CEP Robert Milliner

We’ve taken a bit of heat regarding the Robert Milliner interview. Turns out The Age were interested in the story and asked us a few questions for the purposes of an article that eventually wound up on the cutting-room floor. We thought our responses might interest some of our readers.

1. The Age: Why do you think Mr Milliner agreed to speak to you, given Mallesons’ former public stance against Firmspy and its decision in 2010 to temporarily ban employees from accessing the website?

FS:

When we first wrote about the looming King & Wood merger with Mallesons, we mentioned how Mr Milliner’s response to the GFC divided the Mallesons partnership and how, through the merger, he could leave a highly positive legacy. This would distingiush him from his predecessor Tony D’Aloisio, who, in our opinion, left Mallesons without the bona fides that Mr Milliner will. Having said that, there were some partners (not to mention many more non-partnership staff) who during the height of the GFC thought the Mallesons partnership should have been prepared to “take a bigger hit” than they did. Some bitterness remains within Mallesons ranks about the way staff were treated and, without overestating our readership or importance, we think a great many of those staff are keen readers of Firm Spy, So, it certainly makes sense that Mr Milliner would accept the invitation we gave him to balance the ledger before retiring – in doing so he’ll get an opportunity to explain himself to some of the people who remain disillusioned by the decisions he helped make. It seems clear to us from reading the interview that, on a personal level, Mr Milliner is a decent fellow, but we don’t think this character trait was always apparent in the business decisions he and the executive made during his tenure as Chief Executive Partner.

Also, there’s the small issue of typing the search terms “Robert Milliner” into Google. Our site and our derisory articles pop up near the top of the Google search results, so, at least by engaging with us, Mr Milliner can direct FS visitors to some insightful comments from the man himself.

2. The Age : What do you think this says about Firmspy’s current reputation among the big firms and the legal industry at large? Has it changed over time?

Our reputation differs among the firms. AAR, for example, still don’t correspond with us – something that’s probably understandable given our AllensGate posts earlier this year (to which we’ll be providing another update before Christmas). Clayton Utz is another firm who refuse to engage with us and, again, they’re probably justified in doing so. Among other things, we’ve been on the frontline breaking ClizzoBridgetz stories which are highly damaging to the firm’s reputation in legal circles. It’s a PR nightmare. On the other hand, we’re informed that PwC actually employs an individual solely to monitor Firm Spy and to work out ways to respond to us. So, it’s fair to say that opinions at the top end of town remain divided.

Since we started asking firm’s for comments on stories pre-publication (which we started in 2011), we think our reputation among firms has changed. As we see with Freehills and now with Mallesons, engaging with FS gives firms an opportunity to have their say in beneficial ways. If they decline the invitation, then, as we saw with KPMG’s redundancies last week, it can come back to bite them. Our aim is to improve our reputation among the firms without compromising our ideals. When virtually the entirety of a firm’s workforce is reading one of our articles (recent examples of this would be BDO, KPMG and Mallesons), then it makes sense to us that the firms would want to have their say. With any luck they’ll soon see this and our articles can become more balanced.

3. The Age: Why do you think Firmspy has garnered so much backlash from such major law firms (Clayton Utz is another example that comes to mind.)

Again, at the risk of overstating our importance or our reach, we think Firm Spy has disrupted the comfortable status quo that preceded us. Graduates, lateral recruits, employees, clients and the general public – all of them – were led (and continue to be led) into believing corporate life is something that it is not. It’s not glitzy or glamourous; well, certainly not for the first 15 years. It’s hours and hours of time spent in front of a computer, in a business suit, rubbing shoulders with colleagues that, for the most part, you dislike. It’s missed birthdays, binned social calendars, arteries clogged, and, ultimately, precious years lost in an environment where anxiety and depression thrive. Our site attempts to shed light on what corporate life is really like so that people can make informed decisions about the career path they want. We also hope to pressure old-school partners into making positive changes so that the working lives of juniors improve. Part of this involves the exposure of uncomfortable firm news and this is probably the major reason why, as you say, we’ve garnered such a backlash.

4. The Age: Can you give me any specific traffic figures for the site? E.g. How has its traffic changed over the past year?

We now average more than 20,000 hits per weekday and we continue to grow. We get about half a million hits each month.

5. The Age: Why did you decide to approach Robert Milliner? (To help further your aims to improve your reputation?) Is he the most prominent interview you’ve secured thus far? And are you approaching other senior executives on a regular basis to answer similar questions?

Mallesons remains the Australian legal “market maker” and Robert Milliner its Lloyd Blankfein. The decisions that Robert and his executive make cast reverberations across the entire Australian legal market. Look at junior lawyer salaries; the firm’s stubborn refusal to move early on pay in our view helps explain the painful disparity we see between the salaries of juniors here and their US counterparts. We wanted to interview Robert because, to our minds, he has been the most influential corporate lawyer in Australia in his 7-year stint as Chief Executive Partner. We also wanted to interview him in the interest of being fair – we’ve been his number 1 critic over the last few years and wanted to give him a chance to comment before he signs off. The bonus is that our visitors will have something insightful to read, rather than the usual crap you find in the glossy brochures. If our reputation improves, then, well, that’s a bonus too.

Certainly, yes, Robert is the most prominent interview we’ve secured so far. No, we haven’t really been approaching corporate figureheads with any real regularity, but looking at today’s post as an example, we’ve secured comments from the Vice Chancellor of ACU and the Chair of the Counsel of Australian Law Deans.

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