Always first to break the big news stories, as was the case with the DLA Phillips Fox mass redundancies, the Firm Spy can today also reveal that many of the sacked workers are rumoured to have been precedents staff.

We received the following anonymous tip last night:

What firm would get rid of the majority of their precedents team? DLA Phillips Fox, of course.

If this is true, one would imagine there are some understandably unhappy campers among the ex-Foxers.  Like most BigLaw firms, the precedents team customarily ensure that standard documents, which are used by lawyers as a starting-point and then modified to suit a particular client’s needs, are constantly updated to reflect changes in the law.  A new job for the winter clerks, perhaps?

The Firm Spy wishes to thank DLA Phillips Fox Media Relations Consultant Clare Buttner for her previous comments and emails and invites her clarify the roles of the sacked workers.

We must be doing something right: earlier this week , solicitors for ‘cashed-up bogan’ duo Lleyton & Bec Hewitt wrote to the Firm Spy threatening legal action unless we edited a post and issue a public apology.  Well Lleyton, without admitting liability or endorsing your seriously hilarious views on the law of defamation, here it is…

For those who have forgotten, Lleyton Hewitt is a famous, dual Grand-Slam winning Australian tennis player. In one memorable game, Hewitt is reported as having:

swore at his first opponent and gave him the finger…[and] questioned line calls: one such disagreement led [Hewitt] to ask loudly, of one official: “Who is this poof?”

While Lleyton’s comments have no doubt offended many over the years, the Firm Spy remark in question — innocuous fun though it was — seems to have enraged the tennis star.  It appeared beneath a since-removed photo of the couple, in an article written by the Firm Spy about redundancies in the South Australian court system.  The post can probably still be found online somewhere.

So we’re sorry Lleyts! Good luck in the French Open!

The correspondence serves as a timely reminder that the Firm Spy is committed to reporting accurate information and to not defaming people.  We invite corrections and comments with every one of our posts.  Send the Firm Spy your news and views today!

Top-tier Tightwad Freehills, having already smothered office morale with a pay-freeze announced just three months

after the firm declared that it could beat the GFC,  appears to have a new target - casual-clothes Friday.

The queer musings of self-proclaimed  ‘people partner’ Peter Butler have raised questions over the future of the weekly tradition.  In an interview with the Financial Review 22/05, Butler fondly recalled:

going out on Friday nights in the 90’s and finding bars filled with young male workers , their sleeves rolled up, white shirts pulled out, ties loose and the top button undone.

Later in the article, Butler openly lamented the loss of the 90’s look and signalled the possible end of Friday fun-day, by saying:

It was almost like a uniform and it was a symbol of how these things are - that they’d been working, and working pretty hard. Maybe that’s a symbol that people in that sort of economic environment are very keen to project and we’ll see it again, I’m sure.

Does your firm enjoy casual-Friday?

Is it appropriate in these troubled economic times to suffocate office morale by forcing workers to abandon casual-Friday and wear professional attire when there is little or no work to do?

Would the Freehills people partner’  benefit from a viewing of MC Hammer’s music video ‘Cant Touch This’?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

It had to happen sooner or later.  One anonymous tipster writes to the Firm Spy that:

at mallesons not only did they get the pay freeze last week, but this week they’ve cut off access to facebook.

Another tipster wrote that ‘technical reasons’ were behind the block.   Strange, you’d think that with all this spare time on their hands, Mallesons employees’d have more reason than ever to be dicking about on the internet.

What sites does your firm block?  Is the Firm Spy next?  Tell us in the comments — super-anonymously if you so choose.

Two days ago the Firm Spy commented on the sick timing of Minter Ellison’s decision to publicise its alumni network

‘Remember Me’. Of all the times in history in which P&D Coordinator Kerrie Bowden could have trumpeted Minters’ alumni network, she chose one week after dozens of workers were unceremoniously sacked.

Well, in an effort to dig the firm out of this mess, it appears Bowden has contacted  The New Lawyer to try to place a positive spin on our report. Instead, Kerrie Bowden has mired Minter Ellison in an even more scandalous situation.

In an excellent news story from The New Lawyer, Kerrie Bowden revealed:

the firm was holding a number of vacant lawyer positions… the firm is looking for five lawyers… property vacancies appear despite recent redundancies made in that area.

Vacancies? Where there were redundancies one week ago?

As noted by the Commonwealth Workplace Authority:

Redundancy is when an employer decides an employee’s job isn’t needed to be done by anyone. The job, not the employee, becomes redundant.

Do the ‘redundant’ lawyers have a claim for unfair dismissal?

If Minter Ellison is unable to correctly implement redundancies in its own office, how can it possibly propose to advise on the implementation of redundancies in the wider community?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

It is little wonder that Tom Mosby, a former Sparke Helmore and Clayton Utz lawyer, has decided to ditch the suit for an apron. People always need food, though not, as is becoming increasingly evident, fat and arrogant lawyers.

Mosby was one of several Sparke Helmore lawyers made redundant late last year. In his biography for the show he notes:

This was fate. If I wasn’t made redundant I never would have applied…  I was working in law [at Sparke Helmore] in Brisbane when I was made redundant…  I went through a period of anger and

I went through a period of anger and frustration

frustration, over the couple of days following this but then picked myself up and started to look at is as a positive thing, allowing me to change the course of my future career … I started looking at other options … Then I suddenly saw the advert for MasterChef. I kept it on the backburner and then eventually did the application on the last day. I was quite philosophical about it and then I got the call. If I wasn’t made redundant I never would have applied.

No word yet on whether Tom will serve up a bowl of poo ice cream to his former employer if he wins the program, though no doubt the deserving Sparke Helmore partners can ill-afford client lunches at present anyhow.

The Firm Spy wishes Tom the best of luck!

Send your news and views to the Firm Spy!

As reported in today’s Finacial Review against the wishes of the PwC partnership:

…it is understood between 40 and 50 partners were given the option [of a payout] to leave the firm before June 30 or remain in their position to tough out the downturn… PwC spokesperson Danielle Hinwood… said retirement arrangements were an ongiong issue… The number of those asked to consider exiting represents about 10 per cent of its partnership… compensation … was understood to be between six and 12 months’ pay.

A PwC spy had the following statement about these revelations:

Barely a week goes by without some form of devastating news from management. I have never worked in a more anxiety-inducing environment in my life and doubt I ever will. If today’s rumours about mass partner retirements are true, it will certainly mean third and fourth waves of redundancies…we will be starved of work…  To any graduate contemplating a future with PwC,  think twice about whether you deserve a working life like this…

To date, PwC has made a first and second wave of redundancies, deferred graduate start dates, and underhandedly frozen staff pay.

Do you think PwC staff are entitled to expect better treatment from their employer?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

Just one week after unceremoniously sacking dozens of work

ers, Minter Ellison has made the nauseatingly ill-timed decision to publicize its alumni network ‘Remember Me’.

In an article appearing in the current edition of BRW, people and development director Kerrie Bowden is quoted as saying:

We want to utilise people who have left the firm … we want to maintain a link with them… keep them tied to the firm…

Like all good P&D staff who seem aimless and at a loose end during office hours, yet bemoan how ‘hard’ they work, Kerrie goes on to note:

Putting together a list of previous staff entails going through old logs and email addresses need constant updating…It’s a logistical nightmare but the return is worthwhile…

Surely checking the doors of the 35 freshly vacated offices isn’t that difficult, is it Kerrie? The dust is yet to settle!

The motive for all this ‘hard work’ becomes clear later in the article when a statistic is quoted that:

the propensity to recommend is six times higher for alumni than any other group… From a business perspective, the alumni experience is important because in the future alumni may have influence over the purchase of [a company’s] products and services… Alumni networks … offer opportunities for new business and can boost marketing and public relations programs.

Is it right for Minter Ellison to freeze employee pay, decide one month later to sack 35 of the affected workers, and then, as they line up for unemployment benefits just one week later, to ask them to  ‘keep in touch’ such that it can ‘boost marketing and PR programs’?

Has Minters gone one step too far?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

With questions still being asked about Clayton Utz’s conduct in relation to the pay freeze uncovered by the

Firm Spy, we can today report that, at least for some Clayton Utz staff, it came on the back of an unpaid  leave of absence at the behest of the firm.

We received the following tip from an anonymous source earlier today:

At Clayton Utz Sydney earlier this year there was a team in the corporate group where the partner made/arranged for her team to take unpaid leave for about a month.

The same lawyers who agreed to take leave without pay have nevertheless had their pay frozen along with all other non-partner staff. Going by the Firm Spy’s analysis of the PwC leaves of absence, this means that the affected employees will receive a significant decrease in wages.

Have you been asked to take leave without pay?

Are Clayton Utz partners being fair to lawyers who took leave without pay by freezing their wages?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views first!

In a Firm Spy exclusive, we can reveal that Corrs Chambers Westgarth is rumoured to have implemented a

firm-wide pay freeze yesterday.

We received the following anonymous tip last night:

Following the crowd, Corrs froze salaries today.

Over and above other Australian law firms, the Corrs patnership has used virtually any means open to it to keep precious dollars in the partnership pool.

It started with Corrs closing its office on the Gold Coast at the very outset of the GFC. The firm then calculated that it could give staff money for no chores at Corrs - offering lawyers a percentage of their salary for taking a leave of absence. Next Corrs offerred graduates a whopping $10,000 to defer their graduate position.Then came lawyer and support staff redundancies. Finally, Corrs then took the opportunity to hedge future graduate intakes by teaming up with Freehills in a new government initiative.

Short of rattling tins in the office, what can the Corrs partners now do to save money?

Is it time that partners simply came to terms with earning less money?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!