We are about three weeks past of the anniversary date that the Firm Spy was temporarily shut down. We used to appear at www.firmspy.com.au, but had to start afresh at www.firmspy.com (without the .au).

mwahahahahaha

Since that time, we have received well over one million hits on our site. 1,113,415 to be exact (as of 30/6/2010)

Every now and then we reflect on exactly what we are and what we’re trying to achieve. And now is probably as good a time as any to be reflective. Are we a gossip site? A blog? A news source? We don’t really know. However, we think for the most part, we are about trying to keep things as transparent as possible. This is paradoxical, given that we don’t reveal who we are, but we believe this is necessary in order to continue to report without the editorial bias that we see in competitor news media (excepting the AFR occasionally).

Our mission, if we have one, probably starts at univiersities - giving students a clearer picture of precisely what to expect after graduation. Many of our readers are university students. To this end, we read with interest the comments from two university students in an article forming part of the AFR Partnership Survey:

Third year Maquarie University law student Tanja Maley says she hopes to become a partner in a top commercial firm, and everything else - family included - can follow. “I want a fast city life and i want the long hours”, she says. “I don’t think I’d be satisfied if I wasn’t challenged in that respect.”

But fellow student Tahnee Nicholson says that after completing a clerkship at a top national firm and accepting a graduate position, she is concerned about the obstacles facing women. “One of the male partners said to me at one point: “You know, women partners have to sacrifice a lot more to get here than men do,” she says. Successful female partners are described as “ballsy and gutsy women”, she says. Nicholson still wants to become a partner and hopes that “by the time I get to that stage the things expected of a partner will have changed especially for female partners”.

But do students have any idea what being a partner at a major corporate law firm is really like? Sure, they probably know that the cash is good, but what about the day to day life of a partner? What about the isolation from family and friends? AFR Legal Affairs editors James Eyers and Hannah Low gave a fantastic - and in our view 100% correct - insight into the troubles that face partners who, probably feeling estranged from family and friends, decide they might want to temporarily work part time, or with less intensity:

A key reason why changing gears can be problematic is that the equity models of many law firms don’t respond to partners seeking to reduce the amount of profit they receive from the partnership, which is typically determined by allocating points. Even at the firms that have abandoned traditional lock-step equity structures for more performance-based models, reducing points is viewed as a sign of weakness.

Many firms struggle with such requests [to work part time]. It is well known in the industry that “part time” does not necessarily mean fewer hours will be worked. At many firms, part-time partners keep the same billing targets, meaning they have to squash a full-time workload into three or four days. For others, it can simply mean doing the same work from home yet be paid at the part-time rate.

Meanwhile, Dwyer Health consultant Ted Dwyer said that:

historically Australian firms have been unwilling to reduce levels of equity to accommodate flexible working arrangements. “There has been a tradition of de-equitising partners”, he says.

For our student readers thinking about the distant prospect of equity in a law firm, be careful what you wish for. The overwhelming likelihood is that you’ll never get there, but supposing you do, is the fundamentally shallow existence of growing old chained to a desk all that alluring? What about for $1,500,000.00 per year?

But we digress. Today is a celebration of the Firm Spy’s arrival, and let’s not sully it more talk about the corporate partners who feature so prominently in all of our other publications.

Many moons ago, we made the following statement which appears on our “about us“ page:

Because we are professionals ourselves, we know what it’s like, and we have our ear to the ground for the latest gossip and news you won’t hear anywhere else.  So beware: you are being watched.

Given that we’ve now chalked up our millionth hit, perhaps this statement should now read:

Because we are professionals ourselves, we know what it’s like, and we have our ear to the ground for the latest gossip and news you won’t hear anywhere else.  So beware: you are being watched and so are we.

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

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