After a fantastic year in 2009 in which the firm won the inaugural Firm Spy Corporate Firm of the Year Award, Freehills has descended into damage control today with a former lawyer alleging the firm discriminated against her.
According to The Age, the case highlights the poor working conditions at law firms.
The lawyer in question is Nicole Stransky, a 50 year old, who was employed at Freehills from 2006. She claims she was bullied and harassed during 2008 and 2009 to such an extent that she developed suicidal thoughts and a general deterioration in her mental health.
It is quite ironic that these allegations are being levelled at the firm, given that Freehills ex-managing partner Peter Butler said at the 2007 Tristan Jepson Memorial Lecture (an event honouring the legacy of a lawyer who committed suicide after battling depression) that:
This is not a matter of competitive edge between professionals, whether barristers or solicitors or warring firms … this is a matter that the profession needs to work on jointly… I’ve seen the [devastating effects of depression] in my family. I’ve seen it with my friends and I’ve seen it with my own firm. I want to do something about it. All of us do. We need to bring this issue of depression to the forefront of our thinking. Not as something that is embarassing and we don’t talk about it; it should not be like that … [we need to] develop a culture where for someone to say to someone else – a friend or colleague – ‘I’m depresssed’ is seen in the same way as any other illness, worthy of no more embarrassment or awkwardness than ‘I’ve got a fever’ or some other problem.
If Stransky’s allegations are to be believed, she was never exposed to a culture in which it was “ok” to say she was depressed. As reported today in The Age:
Her case, now in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, is alleging discrimination on the basis of age, employment activity and her impairment. An earlier unfair dismissal claim was confidentially settled after her job was terminated while she was on sick leave in April last year…
…she said the problems started once she spoke to human resources in April and May 2008 and told them that younger colleagues were getting more work and that she was being excluded by her partners. ”I did it appropriately, I did it respectfully … my younger colleagues were getting most of the client [billable] work, which I can substantiate with these [work] utilisation reports.” …When she returned from six weeks’ sick leave, she said she discovered that Mr Jose had told her colleagues that she had an active WorkCover claim, which she regarded as a serious invasion of her privacy.
Ms Stransky alleged the partners who supervised her – including the former head of the Trade Practices Commission, Bob Baxt – excluded her and isolated her after she raised concerns about her career development with management in early 2008… Ms Stransky alleged that her coach and supervising partner, Chris Jose, spoke to her in an aggressive manner with cutting personal remarks on several occasions after she challenged the lack of work.
A psychiatrist’s report on Ms Stransky, commissioned by Freehills in late 2008, found she had a major depressive disorder with anxiety, panic attacks and features of traumatisation. The report described her as ”highly intelligent, open, honest [and] reliable”, and added, ”I had no reason to doubt the reliability, validity, veracity, accuracy or consistency of her account.” … Ms Stransky said she might never be able to work again as a result of the experience as she was still very ill.
How are working conditions in your office? Is your supervising partner aggressive?
Can anything be done to combat high levels of depression and anxiety within the legal prefession?
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Good on you Nicole for standing up for yourself. It is a very hard and brave thing to do when you have been bullied until you are depressed and suicidal. It is a victory in itself to do so. You are not alone, I have been through exactly the same thing (but at a different law firm).
I met Nicole Stransky some years ago. She was professional, caring, friendly, and really dedicated towards building a legal career. Devestated and disgusted to hear her account of how she was treated. I have had some experience of law firm culture and much of it was not good. I left.
The management robots at Freehills might have us believe that they care for the mental welfare of their staff yet like a number of other law firms actively promote the very conditions which cause depression. I was also subjected to bullying by a partner at another law firm. The incident had a devastating impact on my personal health and family life. I am not surprised to hear Nicole’s account of her treatment. I hope but doubt that it will bring an end to this behaviour.
i feel extremely sorry for this woman if these allegations are correct. Having worked for a top three firm before, and a MC firm in the UK, the amount of intimidation and abuse that I have seen dished out to staff over the years is nothing short of shocking. The same thing indeed happened to me – totally destroying my self confidence and career development. You basically are a winner or a loser at that type of firm – if a loser (ie lots of capacity, no career mentoring or development, constant criticism) get out now because it only gets worse, and they only make you feel like you are not good enough to work there..
Good on Nicole. I hope she makes a full recovery and can move on to greener pastures. It just goes to show the extent of law firm bullying and belittling is not limited to just younger staff. I previously worked for one of the top firms and experienced extreme levels of belittling and bullying on numerous occassions from my supervising Director. HR made matters worse (after I built up the courage to actually speak to someone at work about it) by concluding that my supervising Director was “probably stressed” and that perhaps I shouldn’t take the the verbal bashings “seriously”.
Many occassions I found myself crying in bathroom stalls and at home after work. I planned to leave my job with or without another role to go to after 2 weeks leave I had arranged months prior. Forty minutes into my first day back I was made redundant. I have never, ever looked back.
I’m afraid Nicole is only one voice of many who have experienced ligit depression at the hands of law firm bullies. This toxic culture Nicole describes is so similar to my experience and I am so glad she was brave enough to make a stand.
I’m going to take a contrarian position on this one.
Reading between the lines, Ms Stransky was an under-performer and the “freezing out” treatment that was being meted out to her was a technique used by the firm to performance-manage her out. By making her working conditions so unpleasant, it would have become clear to Ms Stransky that her position was untenable, and that her career progression was effectively stalled, thereby prompting her to leave without being overtly pushed. It may be cruel and inhumane, but this practice happens in many law firms. Ms Stransky is not the lone ranger there.
Also, in my experience, mature-age graduates don’t tend to work out in the top-tier law firm environment.
Firstly, mature-age graduates by and large resent taking orders from senior associates or partners who are 10 or 15 years their junior.
Secondly, because they are late to the law, they are in such a hurry to get-ahead, even though they have virtually zilch legal experience.
Thirdly, they tend to have little in common with their peer graduates, so find it difficult to form peer-to-peer social networks.
Fourthly, while mature-age graduates have the advantage of life experience and a previous career or two behind them, they can come into a law firm environment set in their ways and are not very adaptable.
Fifth, legal practice is a young person’s game. The culture is very much one of flogging the junior lawyers into the ground, having them work 14, 16, 18 hour days if necessary, with a view to achieving senior associate within 5 years or so and (with a bit of luck, good timing and ability) securing partnership within 10-12 years PQE. The big firms pay lip service to work/life balance. One of the reasons junior lawyers are prepared to work hard is because of the prospect of a payoff a few years down the track. Goodness knows what would possess a 50-year old to work ridiculous hours to progress towards achieving partnership at, say, 60 years of age, at an age when firms are pensioning off their partners or putting them onto salaried consultancies. Even if she did attain partnership at 60, that gives her no more than about 5 years generating partner-level income.
Yes, these are generalisations, but after 12 years in practice, I have seen plenty of Nicole Stranskys.
And I’m perplexed as to why a person in a such an evidently fragile mental state would willingly subject herself to the stressful and expensive process of suing a law firm, with the prospect of receiving a character assessment and performance appraisal under cross-examination at the hearing. Loads of people leave law firms in unhappy circumstances. Loads of them have legitimate grievances about the treatment they received. But to sue your former employer and then run to the media to ventilate your grievances? Just get over it, cut your losses, and move on.
Anonymous (4 March) you are part of the problem. It is people like you who turn a blind eye that perpetuates the problem of discrimination and bullying. It also reinforces the bully’s power because they know they can get away with it. They rely upon the fact that the victim will be so traumatised that they will not have the courage to sue. By suing her employer (and the media reporting it)Nicole has drawn attention to the widespread problems of discrimination and bullying in the legal profession. Her action should be a wakeup call. Instead of defending the action Freehills should be looking at how its HR systems and policies went wrong. Surely, there is at least one partner there who has the courage to stand up and say, “this type of behaviour is unacceptable.”
Too often bullying by partners and management is covered up by HR simply getting rid of the victim as soon as they complain before they can tell anyone else about it – they are seen as “the problem”. I know of numerous instances where HR has refused, to the victim’s face, to comply with its own policies – leaving the victim helpless. The partners chose to turn a blind eye. There is no option but to take legal action (if there was an independent body or union that lawyers could go to perhaps Nicole would not have to sue).
Studies show that it is the bullies that have the problems. They do it because it makes them feel powerful to humiliate someone else. It is not the victim that is the problem.
It is a generalisation and an insult to simply assume that Nicole is an underperformer because she was bullied. I worked for the same employer for years, was a perfect employee, had impressive performance reviews, was well over budget (a fortune some years), never made any complaints and never had any problems with anyone; but day I was suddenly bullied by someone who had never before spoken to me. None of the bullying had anything to do with my performance . Later on I was bullied again by the same person (with a partner looking on). In that one day I changed from someone who was so determined that I had worked long hours through serious illness, into someone who nearly committed suicide so as to not go back to that office. A complaint to HR drew no response until they set me up to attend a meeting where my employment was terminated by the bully. I would have loved to have sued them, because they absolutely destroyed me. Years later I still have nightmares. Bullying not only affects the victim but also their family.
If someone is an underperformer, there are ways that they can be dealt with which allows them dignity and respect. Is an extra few dollars in a partners pocket worth more than a human life? Are partners so obsessed with profit and money that they will have no regard for the potential consequences of their actions on another human being?
Discrimination and bullying is not acceptable and should not be tolerated in the workplace.
Anonymous 4 March 2010 says that mature aged law graduates resent taking instruction from younger supervisors, are unable to establish peer to peer social networks, are set in their ways, not very adaptable and overly ambitious. Is there any evidence to support these claims ? I seriously doubt it…..in any other context (ie. substitute the words ‘mature graduate’ with ‘woman’ or ‘gay’) and these kinds of comments would be seen for what they are – stereotypical twaddle.
Yet again I am left perplexed by the popular freezing out tactics used by top tier law firms to push ‘under-performing’ lawyers out the door.
At my former top tier workplace (no, not Freehills) I saw ‘the freeze’ applied most often to 1st or 2nd year lawyers, and even to new law graduates – the very same people the firm spent thousands of dollars recruiting in some cases just 12 months prior. These people represented the cream of the crop coming out of law school and obviously had the softer skills necessary to successfully negotiate the interview process, but yet never once (to my knowledge) did the firm actually attempt to engage in any meaningful performance counselling to deal with their ‘under performance’ or even sit down with these people to explain what it was they had done wrong (in many cases this was absolutely nothing – a personality clash, a once-off poor piece of work or refusal to work past midnight).
Instead, those deemed ‘under-performers’ quickly acquired the reputation as being ‘lazy’, untrustworthy or producing shoddy work and were left twiddling their thumbs all day with nothing to do while lawyers around them pulled 16 hour days picking up the slack. Of course this allowed the firm to crucify these supposed ‘under-performers’ come performance review time because (surprise, surprise) their billables were well short of target. Some dug in temporarily, but all eventually conceded defeat and left.
Surely though it is cheaper from the firm’s point of view to either acknowledge and make a genuine attempt to fix the problem (these are highly intelligent, hard-working university graduates we are dealing with here) or, if it really is irreparable, surely the firm has nothing to fear by being open and terminating their employment? But no, instead it is apparently better to pay people to sit around and do nothing for months while waiting for them to get the message and quit, and then spend thousands more recruiting their replacements.
Thank god I saw the light!