Top quality Clayton Utz firm spying has enabled us to break another major story this morning. A very big thank you to the anonymous Clutz spy who sent us the following news:

size and shape IN YOUR FACE!

We don’t normally hear much about all the upstairs politics at Clayton Utz, but the place seems to be exploding over the choice of the new CEO. A group of us in Sydney pieced together the following on Friday night. We knew something was up when doors started opening and shutting furiously all Friday afternoon with partners in more animated conversation than we have seen before. Arms were waving and they seemed pretty worked up (through the walls you get some very good information when they raise their voices). Then we received an all staff email late Friday from Linda Evans (one of the board members) that Darryl McDonough from Brisbane had been appointed as the new CEO (don’t know much about him). We were not told much other than he was the former CU chairman and a director of a listed company called Super Cheap Auto (plus all the usual talk about “vision” etc etc).

But then it began to get interesting. One of us heard that McDonough was meant to be retiring soon (he is in his early sixties) but Evans had begged him to stay and be the CEO. He was the board chairman a few years ago and appointed David Fagan the current CEO. He then retired and Evans got her job as the current chairperson. Now it has come full circle back to him as CEO. But then it got really interesting. One of the senior lawyers has heard that Evans told the partners at the AGM a week ago that she wanted the firm to change its size and shape. Apparently some partners think this is code for dumping 30 to 40 partners! I guess “size and shape” sounds a lot better than “Partner Involuntary Redundancy Program”. I just hope that my partner isn’t part of all of this as I don’t like my chances if he is. Stay tuned it looks like there could be a lot more to this. Not sure how this looked in the other offices. Clutz Sydney lawyer

Our heart bleeds for the Clutz partners whose futures are now apparently clouded. These folks have delivered no less than “three blows” to Sydney graduates and have been embroiled in allegations of:

• presiding over a network of “whorebags”;
• fostering a culture of harassment;
• imposing involuntary leaves of absence on staff;
• implemented a “Claytons” involuntary redundancy scheme; and
• underhandedly introduced a pay freeze.

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