Our friends at ALB delivered a huge scoop yesterday, reporting that the Adelaide office  of DLAPF would merge with specialist Adelaide tax firm Rankine Tucker.  The firm will be called Fox Tucker and will open its doors on September 6.*** For the dyslexics in the room, that’s “Tox F*cker”. This development follows from an exclusive report we published earlier in the year that the Adelaide office of DLA Phillips Fox had become financially independent of the rest of DLA Phillips Fox.

DLA Piper profit map

Both developments, we believe, form part of a carefully calibrated plan to lure DLAPF’s international affiliate DLA Piper into a full merger with DLA Phillips Fox. This would entitle Australian-based partners to a share of DLA Piper’s global equity pool and is something profitable Aussie partners are understandable eager to facilitate. This includes, of course, DLAPF’s Chief Executive Partner Tony Holland, who left Mallesons in 2008 in preference for a stint DLA Piper’s Dubai office, presumably in search of huge tax-free dollars. However, Mr Holland arrived only to watch the Dubai office fall to pieces when a few months later its major client Nakheel Corp fell on hard times. This ill-timed move has likely come at significant personal cost to Mr Holland; he now finds himself in a considerably less lucrative partnership, not to mention that income tax is payable in Australia. Profits in 2008/2009 were estimated at the following levels between the two firms:

• Mallesons - $1.6m (approx); and
• DLA Phillips Fox - 1.2m (approx).

If those figures are correct (we don’t know if they are), it should come as no surprise that he is championing the idea of a full DLA Piper integration (if the A&O triple jump is anything to go by). Earlier in the year, we published the rumour that Mr Holland was chasing this end with considerable zeal:

Tony Holland wants to get rid of a heap of partners who are not in corporate or finance - ie turn Phillips Fox into another MSJ. Then, and only then, will Sir Nigel at DLA [Piper] give the nod to the full merger.

So what does Firm Spy know about the merger?

Following from the scoop yeasterday, we received the following comments from an anonymous DLAPH spy:

Dearest FS,

For showing your warmth of heart yesterday by removing your post regarding our lovely firm spokeswoman, I thought I would send you some news at the emotions around the firm on the news that we are completely severing DLAPF Adelaide from the broader firm. Everyone I have privately spoken with about this development regards it as the most significant step in the integration by DLA Piper into Australia. We’re all expecting something official to be announced before year’s end.

From what I have heard from DLAPF partners, DLA Piper regards our transactional groups as being attractive enough to formalise an alliance, but a major stumbling block was the Adelaide office which is/was constituted primarily by smaller groups like insurance and DR…

We also received these no-nonsense comments from another anonymous DLAPF spy:

DLA Piper to announce formal merger in a few weeks, with actual merged entity to commence 1 January 2011.

Here is a brief overview of how the firm has changed in the last few months:

• In August DLA Phillips Fox severed ties with its Adelaide office, cutting loose several litigation, employment and insurance partners;
• In May, DLA Phillips Fox appointed Greg Clifton as special counsel in its corporate team and Michelle Gaze as a senior associate in its project finance team;
• In May a a global DLA Piper partner’s conference in May was held which “could lead to a more definitive time frame” as to the timing of the merger;
• In March, the entire “media and entertainment” team defected from DLA Phillips Fox for Tresscox;
• In February, DLA Phillips Fox construction partner Alex Harmann left the firm to join Baker & McKenzie;
• In November last year John Hutchison and Tony Macafee joined DLA Phillips Fox as corporate partners
  
• In October last year, environment and planning senior associate Kim Piskuric left DLA Phillips Fox for Maddocks;
• In August last year, veteran DLA Phillips Fox construction partner Chris Edquist left the firm to join Holding Redlich; and
  
• In late May 2009 environmental law specialist Daniel Clay left DLA Phillips Fox for Minter Ellison,

From what has been reported, therefore, we have seen the loss of the “media” team, the shrinking of the construction team, the withering of the environment, litigation, employment and insurance groups, and a corresponding strengthening of the corporate and banking groups.

Does this sound like music to Sir Nigel’s ears?

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*** As soon as we read the name ‘Fox Tucker’, we immediately pondered “what is a fox’s tucker?”. We typed “what do foxes eat” and discovered that:

Foxes eat small rodents, such as mice and rats.

We hope Fox Tucker makes a few bigger kills as it fights for market share.

We are reliably informed that in sporting parlance, the first day of this working week is known in AFL circles as “Mad Monday”. It is a day fabled for the Bacchanalian indulgences of players from the less successful clubs of the AFL . Dress-ups, booze and general frivolity are but the norm. On this day two years ago, for example, a celebratory Brendon Fevola “paraded outside a city bar in a nightie with a sex toy protruding from his pants” (for footage of the event, click here).

is anything available?

But while Fev occupied himself with a giant dildo and Ben Cousins probably spent this day Travis Tucking into his first bag of “bye-bye-urine-tests”,  we think it was a very different kind of Monday madness which gripped top-tier law firm Mallesons earlier this week. Not only did the firm have to digest the reference made in Friday’s News article (read by half of corporate Australia) that the firm is “run like a prison farm”, but it was also forced to endure the galling task of reading the BRW Top 500 Private Companies.

It was far from cause to celebrate.

The BRW revealed that in the last financial year, Mallesons revenue dropped by 10.5%; a drop-kick trajectory that would see the firm fold like Fitzroy within a handful of years. Not even Clayton Utz, a firm we recently characterised as being on the precipice of nuclear meltdown, could come within a 50m-arc of Mallesons. Clutz posted a revenue decline of 9.7%.

However, both Clutz and Mallesons stood in stark contrast to other top-tier firms:

• Blake Dawson revenue declined by 3.5%;
• Freehills revenue declined by 3%;
• Allens Arthur Robinson revenue (based on BRW estimates) appears to have grown by approx 2%; and
• Minter Ellison revenue grew by 2%

So powerful was this shirt-front that Mallesons has tumbled from its position as Australia’s largest firm by revenue, losing that premiership flag to Minter Ellison by $8.6m. And while Clutz’s fall is explicable by a number of umpire reports (in particular the loss of key partners to A&O), we cant think of any such excuse that is available for Mallesons.

If there are no excuses, what next?

When football fans perceive that their club is underperforming, invaribaly it results in the sacking of the coach. But what happens when a law firm isn’t performing?

Fortunately, Chief Executive Partner Robert MIlliner has already considered the prospect of life after Mallesons, making the following comments to BRW in July of this year:

Post-Mallesons Plan: “I won’t go back into practice - I’ll go and do something different… I wouldn’t mind another executive role - it’s a question of what’s available. I was thinking about doing a few boards and a few people have said to me, oh, you’re too young - young in the sense that I should do a full-time executive role first.”

In relation to the “question of what’s available”, do you think opportunities will open up for the coach that has taken his team from premiership glory to … wooden-spooner-in-waiting?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

We can’t be sure because we’re a comparatively new entrant in this space, but we expect that scarcely in Australia’s history has a law firm have so unequivocally declared its policital partisanship as has Freehills in recent times.

Freehills keeps watch

The AFR reported yesterday:

The Liberal party has underscored the importance of the cliffhanger election result by engaging high-profile senior Freehills partner Steven Penglis to oversee the count… He said his role… was simply to “keep watch over proceedingsa’ for the Liberal Party.

A Freehills partner retained to ensure the vote-counters don’t smuggle any Liberal votes in their, err … budgies!

But the allegiances between Freehills and the Liberal Party appear to run much deeper than “watch-dog” Steven Penglis’ estimated $5000 per-day role:

• The winner of the inner-Melbourne seat of Higgins (recently vacated by Peter Costello) is a former Freehills solicitor by the name of Kelly O’Dwyer;
• Senator Michaelia Cash, elected to Parliament in 2007, is also a Freehills alumni;
• Gregory Stephen Pearce is a current member of the NSW legislative council and he too cut his teeth in the working world at Freehills; and
• Matthew Mason-Cox, elected to the NSW Legislative Council in 2006, is yet another Liberal Party member who started his career at Freehills.

We stopped looking after the fifth page of Google under the search terms “Freehills and the Liberal Party”, but no doubt there are several other current members of Parliament who once worked at Freehills, not to mention many more who are retired or were not re-elected that also worked at the firm and who also bear allegiance to the Liberal Party.

So we’ve got a whole bunch of ex-Freehills Liberals sitting in office and a current Freehills partner zealously advancing the interests of his current client, being the Liberal Party whose interest is to claim an election victory and govern Australia.  But with lucrative Federal government jobs like “advisor to the Federal Government on the NBN project” recently up for grabs, isn’t it a huge risk to apparently declare political allegiances when the matter of who will next govern the country is still very much open to question?

Which brings us back to Mr Penglis; the man overseeing the election for the benefit of the Liberals. A cursory Google search revealed that this isn’t the first “election” he has involved himself in. Late last year, Mr Penglis represented two female-to-male transsexuals who wanted to gain legal recognition as males despite electing not to undergo gender reassignment surgery:

The pair will take their appeal to court in February after the Gender Reassignment Board of WA refused to acknowledge their sex change because they still had female reproductive organs and could potentially bear children.

It seems straightforward enough to the team here at FS: if you’re physiologically a female (evidenced by your sexual organs), then notwithstanding your subjective beliefs and motivations, you will be declared by the Gender Reassignment Board as a female. But Mr Penglis and his clients begged to differ. With absolutely no pun intended, Mr Penglis told The Australian at the time:

They’re desperate to have what they consider their true gender recognised … it’s a real issue and the bottom line is, the board has effectively said no female can be reassigned a male without the requirement to go through a hysterectomy.

Although we’re unsure of the result of this case, presumably Liberal Party boffins considered Penglis something of an election expert following his distillation of the “bottom line” in this case. But tt is less clear whether if faced with a Liberal loss in this hotly contested WA seat, Mr Penglis will simply argue that Mr Abbott should be declared the winner because “he believes he is a winner”.

Do you have a “hung” or “bottom line” election?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

A reasonably de riguer portfolio of legal-media platitudes greeted Chris Freeland last week as he commenced his new role as national managing partner of Baker & McKenzie. Freeland, a recent  Gilbert + Tobin defector, appears to have gotten the new gig on the back of corporate sing-songs like the ‘profit maximisation’ chant he delivered to a managing partners conference a few years ago, where he sang into the mic that profit is about:

just another failed remix

• Ensuring that staff achieve satisfactory levels of productivity;
• Creating appropriate expectations around performance;
• Effective leadership to improve productivity and profitability;
• Communicating information about productivity and financial performance

The legal-media niceties abounded last week. First, The Australian handed Mr Freeland the mic, allowing him to sing the praises of his new firm:

“This is probably the world’s only truly global law firm,” Mr Freeland said. “Given the changes in the dynamics, the entry of magic circle firms in some form or another, the changes in billing and fee arrangements, I actually think this firm is superbly placed.”

Lawyers Weekly followed suit, but this time handed Bakers & McKenzie a megaphone. The firm sang loudly:

“We are very pleased that Chris is bringing his considerable talents to join our Australian team…We welcome the opportunity to continue to develop our provision of strategic and valued legal advice to our clients in Australia and across the globe with Chris’ insight and skills,” said Baker & McKenzie executive committee chairman, John Conroy.

Not to be out-done, ALB also gave Baker & McKenzie the microphone (although it looks to us suspiciously like a pirated copy of an earlier song delivered by the firm):

“the international experience that Chris has matches the global perspective from which we view and consider our strategic opportunities.

With a now mucous-infested microphone in hand, AFR was the last to come to the cabaret party, handing the mic to Mr Freeland late last week (13/8). But Mr Freeland delivered a curious encore performance:

Freeland threw down the challenge to to Allen & Overy, Norton Rose and US firm DLA Piper, which is allied to Phillips Fox in Australia. “Each has its own strategy, but I happen to think that ours is the best … We are not comprised of partners who have come from another place…”

Partners who are not … from another place?  Sounds to us like Freeland forgot the words to his new firm’s song, because according to our research:

Three of the four total partners appointed [by Baker & McKenzie] between July 2009 and July 2010, it turns out, were apparently lateral recruits from Mallesons Stephen Jaques.

Not to mention, of course, that Mr Feeland is the most high-profile recent DEFECTION from Gilbert + Tobin. Not from another place? More like a law firm that would be would be known in the music induustry as a “remix”.

Which brings us to our next point: what sort of role model does a rockstar high-profile defector provide to partners below who might be considering the A&O triple jump? Should Freeland be “throwing down the challenge to A&O”, or quietly strumming his guitar and hoping that A&O doesn’t … sing his partners a sweet little lullaby?

On the subject of lullabies, it would appear that Freeland’s new colleagues are well-versed in err…. corporate ballads. Yes, the following gut-wrenching refrain from Baker & McKenzie has been leaked onto Youtube and is available for the whole world to see:

Baker & McKenzie 2008 Christmas Party.

This appauling video, ostensibly played at the firm’s Christmas party a couple of years ago, is a satirical take on the 1971 pop song I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony by forgotten one-hit-wonder pop-group The New Seekers.

And now, with the microphone finally in Firm Spy’s hands, we too would like to wish Chris Freeland a warm welcome. Good luck teaching the firm how to sing in ‘global fluency’!

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A few weeks ago we published two controversial reports relating to reductions in non-partner fee-earner headcount at Allens Arthur Robinson and Clayton Utz. In the Clayton Utz post, we queried whether the 13.4% reduction in the firm’s non-partner headcount was attributable to “natural attrition” - as the firm contended - or a result of coordinated redundancies - something which aligned with rumours we reported at various times over the last year.

putting the spotlight on the stats

In the AAR post we looked at the official “voluntary” redundancy statistics reported by the firm, and contrasted that figure with the total number of non-partner fee-earners that had left the firm. We speculated that the significant difference in the number “voluntarily” leaving the firm through the redundancy program and those that had otherwise departed the firm might be attributable to alleged “freeze-outs”.

Over the weekend we received the following comments from an anonymous Mallesons spy:

FS - you have reported on the 2009/2010 financial year reductions in headcount that occurred at some major corporate firms but have omitted to scrutinise Mallesons in the same fashion. What gives?

Indeed we had forgotten to get the flashlight out in relation to Notoriously BIG Aussie firm Mallesons. According to the AFR (25/6):

In the year to July 2, Mallesons non-partner fee-earner headcount will have fallen from 1070 to 843 (down 21.2 per cent, the biggest fall of the surveyed firms).

All told, that is a reduction of 227 lawyers. But the voluntary redundancy program, according to the firm, accounted for less than half that number. Morover, the AFR reported in mid-September 2009 that the redundancy scheme affected “about 110 staff, or 5% of the workforce”.

So where did the additional 117 lawyers come from? Mallesons staunchly refuted our rumour  at the time of the scheme that approximately 200 lawyers signed up for the voluntary redundancies, so on that basis, it has to be assumed that the relevant 117 additional lawyers left the firm for no payout.

Save for junior lawyers who might wish to reach a valuable “PQE” milestone to move laterally, the Firm Spy can see no logic in a lawyer deciding to leave the firm in the same year as a voluntary redundancy scheme, but choosing to do so after the voluntary redundancy scheme period. It makes no sense! Receive a healthy payout or receive no payout whatsoever? One would have thought that those populating the offices of Australia’s elite law firm would have the presence of mind to form a well-considered view on the best way to answer that proposition.

The better, more logical view we would argue must be that a degreee of pressure was exerted over some of the affected workers by their partners or management. It might have been akin to the alleged AAR freeze-out pressure.

And if this is the case, we get back to a message we delivered a few weeks ago: that Mr Milliner is conducting the Symphony of Destruction. Moreover, why would an elite university graduate throw themselves into a career at Malleons when:

• hours are probably longer than at competitor firms;
• pay is probably lower than at competitor firms;
• being an excellent lawyer “is simply not enough”; and
• there is a chance that you will be managed or frozen out of the firm if times get tough.

From a graduate’s perspective, is Mallesons really all that it is cracked up to be? Has a partnership expectation of gobsmacking profit, and a relentless desire to maintain that profit, reached a point where the firm’s attraction to elite graduates - arguably its most important asset - is finally waning?

Or, as Notorious B.I.G would have said, is this just a case of Mallesons Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

Earlier this year, we reported the news that DLA Phillips Fox was chasing a full-merger with its offshore affiliate DLA Piper. The AFR broke the story in August 2009 that DLA Phillips Fox was seeking a formal merger with its international affiliate DLA Piper. Since that story, we published an exclusive report on how the Adelaide office of DLA Phillips Fox had become financially independent of the firm.

DLA Piper partner on porns front line

We then published another exclusive story on rumours that incoming DLA Phillips Fox Chief Executive Partner Tony Holland was essentially intending to slim the firm down to encourage the international integration with DLA Piper. In that post, the following was written:

Tony Holland wants to get rid of a heap of partners who are not in corporate or finance - ie turn Phillips Fox into another MSJ. Then, and only then, will Sir Nigel at DLA [Piper] give the nod to the full merger.

However, we now wonder whether DLAPH will still persist with a merger even if given the Piper’s approval, after the hilarious allegation on Friday that a Netherlands-based DLA Piper partner has such an appetite for hardcore interracial pornography, that he apparently carries a USB-stick of it on his person to the office.

According to our UK-based pals Roll on Friday:

The [DLA Piper] partner was giving a presentation at the office of Orangefield Trust, a major Dutch company. Unfortunately when he put his USB stick, which contained his presentation, into the laptop that Orangefield had provided, he discovered that it had an “autoplay” function. And the room was treated to an unstoppable slideshow of hardcore interracial porn.

The Firm Spy the received the following rumour from an anonymous tip from a DLA Piper spy on the weekend:

Re DLA Piper porn scandal reported by RoF, the interracial actress in question was apparently none other than actor Laurence Fishburne’s 19yo daughter, Montana, who recently announced her intention to embark on a “career” in porn.

Incredibly, it appears that the teenage daughter of the star of the Matrix Trilogy, Laurence Fishburn, is indeed throwing herself into the adult industry. But according to E-Online, Montana Fishburne’s debut feature film isn’t set for release until 18 August 2010. So if the rumour is true that the interracial porn forming part of the DLA Piper porn slideshow featured Montana Fishburne, the partner in question has certainly been doing his errr… homework.

On the topic of homework, we have since checked out the website for the Orangefield Trust (the company that was unwittingly forced to endure the porno show) and it contains the following cryptic message in a large font on the homepage:

Your Business
Our Care.

Perhaps the DLA Piper partner in question did his homework and thought that because his private “business” involved hardcore interracial porn, the Orangefield Trust might “care” to know about it?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

Firm Spy cannot guarantee the veracity of the figures quoted in this post

You’ve waited. Not patiently, but you’ve waited.

where does your firm sit?

And now we’re finally going to start revealing the results from the Firm Spy Salary Survey (conducted with the excellent help of Legal Monkey). But we’re going about things slightly differently this year: instead of giving the salary information across all year levels on a firm-by-firm basis, we thought it made more sense to do so on a year level basis across all firms. Better comparisons can be made this way, we think. And we intend to break it down into a managable size, so it’ll be the top-tier, then the mid-tier and then boutique firms.

And no Danny Gilbert - we wont be placing Gilbert + Tobin into the top-tier category despite your laughably premature assertions that your firm should be placed up with the elite.

As you will note below, we still need more help. If you know any other salaries that are missing, please either email us at news@firmspy.com or fill in the survey here.

TOP TIER GRADUATE SALARIES

Sydney:

• Mallesons Stephen Jaques - $72,500
• Freehills - $76,000
• Allens Arthur Robinson - $73,000
• Clayton Utz - $73,000
• Minter Ellison - $70,000
• Blake Dawson - $70,000

Melbourne

• Mallesons Stephen Jaques - $66,000
• Freehills - $65,000
• Allens Arthur Robinson - $65,000
• Clayton Utz - $66,000
• Blake Dawson - $65,000
• Minter Ellison - $60,000

Brisbane:

• Mallesons Stephen Jaques- $61,000
• Freehills - $68,000
• Blake Dawson- $63,000

ACT:

• Mallesons Stephen Jaques - $55,000

Perth:

• Mallesons Stephen Jaques - $67,000

Much is said among the firms when selling the reasonableness of salary levels to staff about “following the market”, but who frames the market? Does it bear any relation to the property market? Or does it rely on “market-makers” like Freehills in the above statistics?

Is Freehills again setting the pace for the Firm Spy Corporate Firm of the Year Award?

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In late May we reported that Lander & Rogers lawyer Peter Kritikides - also a finalist on the popular show Masterchef - recently volunteered to have the letters “L + R” waxed into his hairy chest.

Hello Vac Clerks!

Yes, really. Actual photos of the event are accessible to the public here.

The waxing was held in front of Peter’s colleagues at a firm function. “Test waxes” were conducted on Peter’s ample back hair. One of Peter’s fellow male colleagues even applied fake tan for the event.

Calling to mind distressing images of the protagonist of Hollywood comedy movie 40 Year-Old Virgin, we hope Peter raised plenty of cash with his efforts for his chosen charity (the waxing was part of an elaborate charity fundraiser).

But now that the Masterchef journey is over for Mr Kritikides, will he rejoin his old law firm Lander + Rogers? On his Massterchef website profile, the following is noted:

Pragmatic by nature, Peter doesn’t necessarily expect MasterChef Australia to give him a new career…

And although it may have delivered him some office props, it appears Peter was correct. We received the following comments from an anonymous Lander + Rogers spy on the weekend:

Peter from Masterchef is the guest speaker at the Lander and Rogers seasonal clerkship cocktail night….Rolling out the big guns! hehe

Do you wax? Does your boss give you instructions to get “totally waxed”?

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Occasionally we get it wrong with our stories and this is one such instance.

No, we don’t think the content we previously published was inaccurate, it was just way too personal and irrelevant.

We agree with the comments from Marco below and have thus withdrawn the post.

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

We went looking for some news on Mallesons last night and stumbled onto an interesting piece. A cursory search on Google news revealed no less than three articles featuring a jubilant Mallesons boasting that it had lured Clifford Chance litigation expert Denis Brock.

a draft cross referral agreement

We immediately thought two things:

1. attracting Mr Brock to the firm will give Mallesons an excellent chance to save some face in the wake of ex-Mallesons partner Dave Poddar’s recent defection to A&O (and our subsequent article considering why it would make great sense for many other Mallesons partners to follow him in the “triple jump”); and
2. there is something awfully fishy about a Clifford Chance partner “defecting” to Mallesons when virtually the whole legal world is waiting for an official announcement that Clifford Chance and Mallesons are merging.

We then thought that perhaps it was possible that these two issues are related: the Mallesons board conjured a way to strengthen its apparently vulnerable brand by contriving that it had “lured” a Clifford Chance expert, while at the same time giving that expert an opportunity to witness the nuances of Mallesons before reporting back to his old Magic Circle firm.

Tellingly, Mt Broc’sprofile still appears on the Clifford Chance website. Perhaps the firm will leave it there? His profile reveals that Mr Brock has been with Clifford Chance for 24 years and has been a partner for 15 years. In our view, there is every chance he is the kind of emissary who Clifford Chance would entrust with such an important reconnaissance mission.

Let’s recount the current state of intelligence on the Clifford Chance & Mallesons merger:

• In 1999, Mallesons & Clifford Chance first met to discuss merger plans;
• In late 2008, renewed merger talks broke down as a consequence of the GFC;
• In October 2009 we received a credible report that an in principle agreement on a merger had been reached between Mallesons & Clifford Chance and that a formal announcement would soon thereafter be made;
• Also in October 2009 we saw Mallesons CEP Robert Milliner comment that his firm would likely follow the lead of major UK firms in its remuneration structure of employees;
• In May 2010, the AFR published a report that Mallesons and Clifford Chance were again in advanced stages of merging, but this report was discounted by an anonymous comment we received that appears to have been authored by a Mallesons partner;
• In June 2010 we received our most logical report on the Clifford Chance plans in Australia: that it would do so on its own terms to the exclusion of Mallesons; and
• Also in June, our great friends at Rollonfriday delivered a very interesting scoop on the Mallesons/Clifford Chance tie-up; namely that Clifford Chance intends to open on its own terms in Australia but under the auspices of a “best friends” relationship with Mallesons under a formal “cross-referral agreement”.

In our view, these updates and all of the general intelligence we have gathered is at odds with Mallesons’ claim that a highly respected Clifford Chance partner “defected” to Mallesons.

Mallesons and Clifford Chance are “best friends”!

We think the more sensible view is that Denis Brock is relocating to Mallesons to help prosecute the rumoured merger or formal “cross-referral agreement” and the Mallesons board has seized on it as an opportunity to rebuff the much publicised (and very worrying) defection of Dave Poddar to A&O.

What do you think?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!