Clayton Utz Announces Pay Freeze, Ducks for Cover

Clayton Utz chief executive partner Stuart Clark commented in yesterday’s Financial Review that his firm had “not made a final decision yet” about legal salaries. He then stole the microphone from the interviewer and digressed into a sermon about how wonderfully generous Clutz staff are to each other.

“I think some people underestimate the generosity of the people that work for us.”

Well, the Firm Spy is not buying it!  In a Firm Spy exclusive, we can reveal that last week, before the Financial Review article went to print, Clayton Utz staff were informed that a pay-freeze had been implemented across the firm.  Ironically, in yesterday’s article, Clark said:

I’ve been around to each office and I have updated the staff… with a frank assessment of where we’re at, what is happening, what the prospects were for salary increases.

Evidently the Financial Review was not afforded the same assessment.  One Spy from another firm has since asked us: “Were the relevant documents shredded?”  (Of course they weren’t.)

Is this yet another example of law firm point-scoring? Can we blame an engine for commerce for spinning a negative into a positive?