Thanks to the AFR for the following profile:

Partner Remuneration System

Performance based with a bonus.

corrs tin-rattling antics are forgiven, not forgotten

Partner Pay for 2008/09

A handful of top partners are said to be on guaranteed incomes, as high as $1,900,000.00, while most of the partnership earns more than $1,000,000.00. Salaried partners begin on $270,000.00, new equity partners on $350,000.00 and mid-level equity partners on $600,000.00 with bonuses on top.

Pay

Estimated Profit Margin = 43%

Estimated Profit = $101,000,000.00

Estimated Profit Per Lawyer = $250,000.00

Estimated Profit Per Equity Partner = $1,240,000.00

Revenue

2008/09 Revenue = $235,000.00

Revenue Change 2008/09 = -3.3%

Revenue Per Lawyer = $570,000.00

Revenue Per Partner = $2,160,000.00

Revenue Per Equity Partner = $2,890,000.00

The Verdict

Chief executive John Denton say the firm is “recording our best September ever”. Infrastructure from the firm (the firm has been working on desalination projects in Victoria and South Australia and government work will drive a “much stronger year”, he says. The firm is also advising Chinese companies seeking to invest in the local resources sector.

Comment

Denton has made no secret of his desire to play ball with the biggest firms. Though a slight dip in revenue this year is bound to be a disappointment, the relatively high partner drawings and maintenance of profit margin mean Corrs can offer mega-firm partners a tempting career alternative. Denton’s energy and strategic vision, and the firm’s smaller partnership, will allow it to be more agile than its larger competitors.

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

In a Firm Spy exclusive, we can reveal that Corrs Chambers Westgarth is rumoured to have implemented a

firm-wide pay freeze yesterday.

We received the following anonymous tip last night:

Following the crowd, Corrs froze salaries today.

Over and above other Australian law firms, the Corrs patnership has used virtually any means open to it to keep precious dollars in the partnership pool.

It started with Corrs closing its office on the Gold Coast at the very outset of the GFC. The firm then calculated that it could give staff money for no chores at Corrs - offering lawyers a percentage of their salary for taking a leave of absence. Next Corrs offerred graduates a whopping $10,000 to defer their graduate position.Then came lawyer and support staff redundancies. Finally, Corrs then took the opportunity to hedge future graduate intakes by teaming up with Freehills in a new government initiative.

Short of rattling tins in the office, what can the Corrs partners now do to save money?

Is it time that partners simply came to terms with earning less money?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

In the aftermath of a pay-freeze which the Freehills partnership has confirmed will last well into the future, and following Corrs’ ‘innovative’ measures to avoid paying excess dollars to underutilised graduates, the two firms have

today announced an new method by which they can offload unwanted graduates: make them teach in schools. The two firms have joined forces to partner with Teach For Australia, a scheme reportedly designed to bolster the ranks of Australia’s education system:

Teach for Australia takes graduates and gives them accelerated training to teach in public secondary schools for two years.

The scheme is supported by both Freehills and Corrs, as well as Boston Consulting Group, and while the finer points of the partnership are unclear, it appears that graduates in these three firms will be able to participate in the scheme without fear of losing their graduate position once the two-year term concludes.

Not taken in by this apparently charitable act, a Freehills spy suggests that this is nothing more than:

a veiled attempt by the partnership to hedge their bets going forward… A couple in each intake of graduates will no doubt volunteer to teach and the partners will retain a discretion to permit them to do so, giving them an ability to hedge their bets at a time when no one knows what the future holds.

Do you think that Corrs, Freehills and BCG’s ‘partnership’ with Teach For Australia is simply a ruse to hedge their bets for graduate numbers into the future?

Send us your comments and news!

In an interview in today’s Australian Financial Review, mid-tier middleweight Corrs Chambers Westgarth announced an affirmative action policy to help women in the workplace designed ‘[to help] women position themselves for promotion.’

The pipeline may be contrasted with Minter Ellison’s approach to women in the workplace, which seems skin deep by comparison: employing female and male models and, in the most outrageous circumstances, seeing the glamorous pair hook up.  The Firm Spy queries which of these ‘policies’ will be more successful in the long term.

The Firm Spy can confirm today that a gob-smacking 115 staff of been collectively laid off from DLA Phillips Fox, Deacons & Corrs Chambers Westgarth in the last month.

Numbers lost. Fearful firms.

As reported in today’s Financial Review, over forty lawyers and over seventy support staff have lost their jobs across the three firms and are taking additional measures ‘encouraging lawyers to take secondments with clients or extended leave on reduced pay’.

How many are gone from your firm?

Give the Firm Spy your news abd views first!

Finally some confirmation today about the worst-kept secret pervading Australian law-firm office space!

Corrs Chambers Westgarth are taking the unprecedented move of offering 2009 graduates a whopping $10,000 to defer their graduate employment. At this stage the cash offer has been limited to Brisbane and Sydney offices and has been created to stymie what the partnership has, as quoted in the Financial Review, termed a ‘temporary over-capacity’. The Firm Spy has, however, received several reports that it is more than the fleeting issue suggested by the partners and is, as one Corrs Firm Spy put it,

‘ a rampant finger-twiddling exercise where junior lawyers are openly questioning why they are travelling to work each day.’

FYI - today’s exchange rate with the Thai Baht is 23 THB. One Aussie dollar will buy you 23 BAHT!

The Firm Spy has crunched the numbers and come up with the following year-long deferment plan:

- Jetstar direct from Sydney to Phuket - March 5 2009 costs $311 (balance $9689);
- Rooms on Ko Panyang start from as little as 200baht per night (balance $6515);
- Thai buckets cost 200baht (one per night leaves a balance of $3314);
- Food each day would cost about 150baht (balance $793);
- Return flight on 1 March 2009 will probably be under $400 (those flights arent yet listed) (balance $393).

Deferring Corrs grads who live within their means can therefore look forward to an entire year of Thai holidaying and have enough money for their first week back at work!

If anyone is curious why www.jetstar.com.au experienced a temporary outage yesterday, look no further than the offices

of Corrs Chambers Westgarth. In a staggering move, the Corrs partnership revealed yesterday that it had calculated a stifling equation to respond to the global economic environment; to give lawyers money for nothing.

Corrs has offered staff a 12 month leave of absence on an incredible 20% pay. An average 3rd year senior associate would pocket approx $30,000 under the scheme for doing … no chores at Corrs!

Holidays on the house! Crack out the bubbly!

A firm spokesman said in a statement:

‘we are doing what we can to manage overcapacity where we have it, including offering flexible working arrangments to our staff.’

No inside reports from any Corrs Firm Spies, but we invite emails on holiday plans for the forthcoming year!

In contrast to its graduate recrutiment page, which heralds to prospective graduates that ‘Corrs opens Doors’, Corrs Chambers Westgarth today loudly shut the doors to its Gold Coast Office. This move has resulted in the sacking of one lawyer and four other staff.

Corrs remarked that the move was borne of a firm-wide decision to shift away from the conveyancing practice which largely persisted in the Gold Coast office. Unfortunately, Corrs is yet to comment on the rather clear irony between this move and its trite graduate recruitment sobriquet.

Leave us your comment on behalf of the Corrs partnership!