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A Dodgey, ‘Downcast’ ‘Emergency Situation’; The Knives Come Out For Gilbert + Tobin
Posted by The Spy | Posted in Firm Gossip, Gilbert & Tobin | Posted on 8.58am
Since we reported a few weeks ago on the harbinger of top-tier lawyers departing their firms to start afresh at the up-and-coming (and apparently highly salaried) offices of Gilbert + Tobin, there has been no end of spies ready to criticize the firm.
Take this, for example, received from an anonymous spy over the weekend:
Dearest FirmSpy,
As you know, the concerned public of the Internet and IP lawyers everywhere were buzzing this week for Justice Cowdroy’s decision in Roadshow Films v iiNet (No 3). The film companies were represented by our good friends at G+T and iiNet by Herbert Greer.
After the decision, Neil Gane of Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) made a statement expressing his great disappointment with the judge’s decision. A video of Mr Gane’s statement is shown here:
Note the gentleman on the left of Mr Gane, Michael Williams, partner of G+T. Mr Williams is the tough copyright litigator who helped Universal Music to victory in the Cooper and Kazaa cases. However, like his clients, Mr Williams did not look very tough on Thursday. His eyes appear downcast and his ‘countenance’ (pun intended) differs markedly in expression from his picture on the G+T website:
I guess G+T partners are human too?
Excellent question! Are Gilbert + Tobin partners human? If being charitable is a measure of human-ness, then perhaps the answer is ‘no’, following the rumour also sent us over the weekend from another anonymous spy:
Who quietly left Gilbert + Tobin on Friday because they’d been accused of doing too much pro bono work?
Yes, who did leave? If you know the answer, please tell the Firm Spy!
Rubbing salt into the fresh knife-wound is this, also received over the weekend from an anonymous G+T spy:
As a lawyer who cut my teeth at one of the top tier firms, and who is now at G+T, I can offer some words of warning for any Mallesons lawyers thinking of moving to the “hoi polloi” end of town.
Although the money is better, and depending on the practice, the work interesting and stimulating, G+T lawyers work with very little support, bare bones research resources and second rate IT systems (the firm’s email systems were significantly “slowed” twice in recent week). Also working late nights and weekends are a very frequent occurrence which makes the firm’s official policy of after-hours meals in “emergency situation only” both tight and puzzling. The firm makes you work for that extra bit in
your back pocket, many times over.The training for junior lawyers does not compare with the training provided by the top tier firms; and career progression for mid level lawyers is nowhere near as structured as it should be for a firm of G+T’s
size. And if you are used to the elitist approach of the top tier firms and the concomitant high quality of output, the “close enough is good enough” approach of many of the G+T partners can be incredibly frustrating. On top of all this the firm’s offices look like they haven’t been refurbished since the early 1990s, and the reticence of the firm’s leadership to spend money on new or expanded digs is resulting in more and more lawyers being forced to share smaller and smaller offices.There is also an open question about how long G+T will be able to grow its Telstra practice, as Telstra is used to demanding an incredibly high level of quality from its external lawyers. With some G+T partners used to running matters with lean teams, the lack of what might be called “quality control” over some of the work being sent to Telstra has caused some dissatisfaction in the Telstra ranks (at least one Telstra legal group rated G+T a zero in a recent survey of its satisfaction with the firm’s performance). One way that all firms attempt to build their relationship with Telstra is to “embed” lawyers on secondment in the various Telstra practice groups. The problem for G+T is that it lacks the number of lawyers to do this is an sustainable manner for extended periods of time. And this just means that more work is done by less lawyers at G+T.
Lastly, the Melbourne office is still being run out of serviced offices, with no announcement yet about a permanent location. Read into that what you will.
With these “downcast countenances”, the apparent lack of charity, a “close enough is good enough” attitude, dodgey offices, the “emergency situation only” after-hours meals and apparently oppressive working hours, is G+T really as ‘top-tier’ as Danny Gilbert would have us believe?
Send the Firm Spy your news and views!
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The use of a serviced office no longer carries a stigma. It merely shows an appreciation of the advantages of flexible, fully equipped workspace compared to the inflexible bare walls of conventional space.
Tell Telstra to do it themselves. They will quickly appreciate the quality thereafter or lack of it. The dissatisied person at Telstra is most probably a dissatified ex-lawyer. Comments can be saftely ignored in this situation.
“Tell Telstra to do it themselves.” What a fantastic approach to servicing clients and growing one’s practice: no wonder Dexda seems to have so much time! Let’s hope the quality of Dexda’s legal work doesn’t reflect the quality of his comments, which mostly seem to amount to non sequiturs.