Corrs Chambers Wesgarth HR manager Alexis Navie has made a bit of a habit of using media to broadcast her peculiar views on a variety of matters over the years.

For example, despite having no apparent formal training in psychology*, Navie voiced her opinion on the reasons behind rife depression within the legal industy in a 2006 article:

Part of the problem is in the “nature of the beasts themselves”, she said. “We are talking about the top percentage of the intellectual population.”

More recently she gave her thoughts on scroring the ultimate legal gig in a corporate-buzz-word-intensive article entitled “how to get a job in a law firm”, in which Navie give the following tips:

• ability to get along with people;
• communicate with impact;
• instilling confidence;
• be open to learning;
• develop ability to inspire people.

But the piece de restistance was publiched yesterday by our friends at The New Lawyer . The gist of the article, entitled The people cycle - which was authored entitrely by Corrs’ Alexis Navie - is that the market for legal jobs has finally turned and that firms now need to think about the means by which they will retain staff. With an extremely self-congratulatory tone, Tony Robbins Navie then walks readers itching to hear how best to retain staff through “a few ideas that we  have tried which you might find helpful”:

· Money is important, it is a sign of reward and recognition so get your compensation strategy right. Make sure the criteria is clear and you can explain logically why they have received the salary that they have.

But it is unclear how Navie is able to “logically explain” salaries and the firm’s compensation strategy when, by her own recent admission, the Corrs reumneration system is administratively burdensome and beset with security issues. Navie said:

We were using a manual process with spreadsheets and our main areas of concern were corruption of files, version control issues and security and confidentiality. Additionally we didn’t have real-time reporting of salary increases and the manual processing of salary review letters through mail merging was an administrative headache.”

Naturally, it appears that Navie has failed to follow her own sage advice to “get her compensation strategy right”. Moreover, if anonymous comments contained in the Firm Spy 2010 Remuneration Survey are any indication, it appears that there is a significant level of disillusionment particularly among juniours over the issue of pay.

An anonymous Corrs fifth year wrote:

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

An anonymous Corrs third year wrote:

As a firm, the Perth office is going so well, but all the junior lawyers carry the weight for little in return.

But what about Navie’s other retention advice? Namely:

· Benefits are important too but a benefit for some may not be as attractive to others so do your research with this.

Unfortunately it appears that Navie may have failed to follow the benefits piece too. An anonymous Corrs first year wrote:

Pay increase has been average compared to other big firms. Still relatively happy because I’m in a good department with an approachable partner. I know others are less happy with the increase though. It’s said that Corrs used to pay well (only G+T and the big 3 paid more), with no perks, but it seems the former is no longer the case. Firm exceeded its FY2010 budget, so people are justifiably miffed.

And, rather cheaply, the Sydney partnership decided to hold its EFY party at MoS cafe, a dingey little bar annexed to our building, more known for its mediocre late-night dinner deliveries.

Unsurprisingly, an astute anonymous Corrs fifth-year merged these two issues of HR befuddlement and salary-system security in their comments on the Firm Spy 2010 Remuneration Survey, writing:

very social but poor infrastructure, ie HR, phones…

How is your HR department tracking? Should they keep their views in-house? Or are they also in the “top percentage of the intellectual population”?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

*We could be wrong on the issue of Navie’s formal training in psychology, so we invite her to clarify this point. Or anyone else, for that matter.

Yesterday we asked our spies to respond to a call for information on the rife speculation that another major international law firm merger is in the offing. This precipitated a flood of anonymous emails, a great many of which directed us to Corrs Chambers Wesgarth.

First this:

On the topic of mega-magic-mergers, Corrs CEO John Denton also sent an email last Friday similar to the Mallesons email (ie, “single but looking”). I guess us worker bees will find out when the AFR finds out…

Then this:

Corrs Chambers Wesgarth was relatively advanced in merger negotiations with Blake Dawson at a similar time to the first merger attempt between Mallesons and Clifford Chance in 2008. The talks were stalled by the global financial crisis. All over the office I am hearing talk that partners are considering a merger proposal from a major UK firm. I am not sure of the firm (although Ashursts has been mentioned), however it would seem likely that it would … be a silver circle firm, given that to my knowledge each of the magic circle firms has a referral programme in place with other Australian firms.

Followed by this:

Corrs’ John Denton was apparently furious on Friday that the article published by the Fin Review included comments from Beaton Consulting that it had been involved in advising clients on international merger talks. He wrote an email to all staff that declined to spell out whether the firm is in fact close to a merger, but it has gone some way to confirming that something is going to happen soon…

In last Friday’s article, the AFR made the following comments:

The managing partner of Corrs Chambers Wesgarth, John Denton, said interest from overseas firms in mergers had increased this year. “I have been approached about firm mergers domestically and internationally. It’s fair to say that in the last six months there’s been a heightened level of activity in this.”

Denton does not speculate on the reasons for the heightened level of merger-interest. The Firm Spy, however, has a theory - potential suitors have been on the Corrs graduate recruitment website (www.makingcareersense.com), and have watched the video entitled “What sort of law will I practice?”. The tasteful video, which contains cartoon images of identical (white) men and women (diversity employer, anyone?) in flamboyant orange business suits, gives a tantalising insight into working life at Corrs. After profiling the firm’s various practice groups, it concludes by hypothesising:

you never know, wine law might prove more to your taste.

Have you got a proven taste for something? Does your firm have a taste for an international merger?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

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!