We reported several weeks ago that former Freehills lawyer Nicole Stranksy was intending to sue her former employer based on claims of age discrimination and continued bullying and harassment. Stranksy claimed she felt humiliated as work was distributed to younger lawyers and she was excluded from large and complex matters. She also alleged that her supervising partners behaved in a manner that constituted bullying and harassment.
Both the AFR and The Age have now reported that Stransky has settled her dispute with Freehills for an undisclosed sum.
In response to our post on the dispute, we received several comments which can be found below the post. They give an excellent insight into perceptions prevailing in the industry of the shameful manner in which corporate firms try to “manage out” staff.
We found the following comments to be particularly compelling:
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!
Given that mental health is becoming a pressing issue in law firms, is it time that a more mature, transparent approach is taken to terminating the employment of those seen as underperformers?
Loading...
Sometimes it is the partners themselves that are the problem. I know of an underperforming partner who for many years has “managed out” anyone who might show him/her up i.e the competition. High performing lawyers find themselves excluded from work, clients, the team and become the subject of mind games, until utterly demoralised, they leave.
http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/AIRC/2004/472.html?stem=0&synonyms=0&query=^stransky
Is this the same Nicole Stansky perchance? Sounds like she is a bit of a serial complainer!