Heavy Liquor, Our Weekly Newsletter & The Firm Spy 2010 Remuneration Survey

The Firm Spy will soon be comprehensively updating its weekly newsletter. Part of this update will be the inclusion of stories that don’t feature on our website. So if you want to keep up-to-date with all of our gossip, rumours and news, please type your email address in the column to the right underneath the apt heading “weekly newsletter”. Be sure to click the “subscribe” button too.

knock the top off one!

Onto more pressing matters; namely, The Firm Spy 2010 Remuneration Survey. In conjunction with Legal Monkey, we have been asking all our readers from Australian law firms to kindly – and anonymously – enter their remuneration details in an online survey (available here).

We have had an incredible response so far, but still need everyone’s assistance to get accurate pay-brackets across all offices of all firms. So keep up the fantastic work! Enter your details here.

Some of the more colourful comments we have so far received in response to our question “what makes you happy/sad/ambivalent about your firm include:

A graduate from Mallesons in Sydney wrote:

I dont like the fact that most graduates are ignored by their partner/partner pretends they don’t exist. I don’t like the extremely high billable hour target (5 hours before qualification and 7 after) when for most firms it is about two hours lower per day.

A seventh year Freehills lawyer wrote:

Sad (frustrated): the long hours and unpredictability of the long hours. Always expected to be “on call” on Blackberry.

An Allens Arthur Robinson third year wrote:

REALLY frustrated about pay review – I regularly bill at 135% of my billable target, work crazy hours and weekends for an extra $5000?!? I had been holding out for ‘better’ times with a firm I previously felt loyal to – but with all the cutbacks, additional enforced christmas leave time, lack of any form of morale boost and now the poor pay increase, I’m very flat and disenchanted.

The message we are getting from management – not a single reassuring word – they still have more lawyers than they need and want ppl to leave

A Corrs fifth year wrote:

[the firm] runs on the smell of an oily rag. It’s easier to solve global warming than to get a free lunch out of Corrs.

A Blake Dawson sixth year wrote:

salary increase not in line with market rate, following no increase last year. Definitely not a market leader, although I suspect others at my level are probably getting paid more. Overlooked in promotions. Feel undervalued.

And our favourite – a second year at Minter Ellison wrote:

Minter Ellison is the cheapest firm in the solar system. Right down to my partner refusing to send paper Christmas cards and sending out an electronic card at 5pm on Christmas eve.

We intend to start posting remuneration information for each of the firms in early August. So you’ve all got weekend work:

  • fill in The Firm Spy 2010 Remunerations Survey;
  • sign up for our weekly newsletter; and
  • consume heavy liquor to drink away the winter blues.

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

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