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?

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The irrepressible bane of corporate professionals, billable units are a topic we have seen feature prevalently in recent press. Commentators from across the world are presenting a united front against the billable unit, criticising it as a means to gorge massive profits from corporate clients. And we agree.

when will you clock off?

A few weeks ago, WA ex-Chief Justice Wayne Martin told the ABC:

“It’s time to have another look at alternatives to time billing. There are some serious problems with time billing. It rewards inefficiency, it encourages lawyers to spend more time, it doesn’t focus on value and outcomes and so I think there are more efficient ways of lawyers charging for their services.”

In an interview with the AFR earlier this year, US Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia chimed into the debate, describing the modern dynamics of law firm profit maximisation as “a terrible thing”. Scalia said:

“When I got out of law school, we were only just beginning to adopt the principle that the most ethical way to bill clients was by the hour… there have been huge changes in the business of lawyering - it has become much more of a business.”

Meanwhile, in the AFR (21/5), the legal affairs team of Rachel Nickless, James Eyers and Alex Boxsell took a very welcome (but unfortunately uncharacteristic) swipe at Freehills by noting:

The extent to which big firms have embraced business thinking was made clear when Freehills chief executive Gavin Bell emailed staff last week to announce the firm’s uncapped “Lawyers’ Bonus Plan”, allowing “those who perform exceptionally to be rewarded accordingly…there will be no artifical limit on what an appropriate reward might be.”

So the incentive to crunch the clock even harder has just arrived at Freehills. We wonder what recently retired Victorian Supreme Court Judge David Byrne would think of the new arrangments. His Honour, who believes that the most urgent issue facing the legal community is the cost of access to justice, told The Age Byrne on the weekend that:

“The cost [of commissioning lawyers and litigating] is just appalling, and we have made considerable efforts to reduce it…there’s no incentive in our cost structure for lawyers to be more efficient. You depend so much on their own integrity that they will not just make a meal of it.”

The article goes on:

In a case that still makes Byrne seethe, he lambasted Allens Arthur Robinson’s $3.7 million bill for costs in a case that ran for six years before it went to trial. The final bill was expected to hit $8 million, but this sum could not be recovered anyway because the opposing party sank into receivership. At the time, Byrne described AAR’s bill as ”a great reproach on the legal system” and said ”some restraint, some proportionality and perhaps less greed should be shown”.

Opaque billing narrations - like the hillarious alleged Minter Ellison “strategy advice” - make it almost impossible for clients to know what they’re paying for. But we all know that. What time is it… fudge o’clock? What is interesting though, is that we’re finally seeing fixed-fee structures creeping into legal retainers. And it is coming from the top. Mallesons Stephen Jaques has now confirmed that it is on a fixed-fee agreement with Australia’s best client Telstra. This follows on from Telstra’s alleged one-million-a-month deal with Gilbert + Tobin. We received the following comments from an anonymous Mallesons spy several weeks ago, suggesting that the fixed-fee contract with Telstra may be here to stay:

The Firm Spy’s hypothesis that the fixed fee arrangement between Mallesons and Telstra would force lawyers to work even harder has been widely shot down in flames by people in the office. I think the view from most is that the new arrangement has taken significant pressure off Mallesons staff. For example we no longer have to create fee estimates on a daily basis.

But the question arises, how is Mallesons going to respond to Freehills’ uncapped “Lawyers’ Bonus Plan” in circumstances where it has a fixed fee arrangement?  When the money is already in the bank, the incentive to flog your lawyers sort of evaporates, doesn’t it? And what will happen at Freehills if clients ask for fixed billing arrangements?

Could too many units of billables be career-killable?

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A couple of weeks ago, the AFR published an interesting article profiling parental leave policies amongst the Big4 accounting firms. In that article, the following was written:

insignificant cost

From July 1, KPMG will increase paid leave from 12 to 18 weeks for new parents (male, female and same-sex couples) who are primary care givers and up to three weeks’ paid leave for non-primary care givers, as well as broadening the scope of the firm’s policies to include adoption and fostering.\

In relation to the changes, KPMG national managing partner for people James Allt-Graham said they represented:

“a pretty significant amount of money”.

The article also profiled the parental leave policy at PWC, noting:

PricewaterhouseCoopers earlier this year upgraded its parental leave policy under its flexible working arrangement programs so that, from July 1, new parents can get 18 weeks’ paid leave if they are the primary care giver and up to three weeks’ paid leave for non-primary care givers. The program, which previously offered 12 weeks’ leave, always included staff who became parents through adoption, fostering, and surrogacy.

The article pointed out an important difference between the KPMG and PWC policies by noting:

KPMG’s option is based on the primary carer’s years of service whereas PwC says its program is offered to all staff who have been with the firm for 12 months or more. KPMG gives 14 weeks for staff with 2 to 5 years service, 16 weeks for 5 to 8 years of service and 18 weeks for more than 8 years of service

Rival Big4 firm Ernst & Young has the least generous parental leave policy. As written by the AFR:

Ernst & Young provides 12 weeks’ paid leave for the primary care giver and up to 5 days … parental leave at the time of birth or adoption for the secondary care giver.

Meanwhile, in another AFR article on parental leave that appeared in the newspaper last week (5/5), comments were made on the Rudd governments offer to administer its paid parental leave scheme. Under this scheme, primary care givers would be given 18 weeks parental leave at minimum wage. Importantly, the following is written:

Lawyers fear some employers will use the taxpayer funds they get under the scheme simply to subsidise existing arrangements, thereby reducing their own labour costs.

One of the lawyers in question appears to be Freehills partner Kate Jenkins. Moreover, the article goes on to note:

… Freehills equal opportunity partner Kate Jenkins said some employers with their own paid parental leave schemes might now simply top up the government minimum wage payments to ensure staff received 18 weeks’ full pay, rather than continuing with their current arrangements.

Any thoughts on whether partners in the Big4 accounting firms, who not more than a week earlier were praising their parental leave policies as a weapon to retain staff “as the war for talent re-emerges”, might simply adopt the “top-up” approach that Freehills’ Jenkins is fearful of? How about KPMG national managing partner for people James Allt-Graham who said the new parental leave policy represented “a pretty significant amount of money”?

Perhaps we’ll get the accountants to crunch the numbers!

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In March we reported that Nicole Stransky had brought an action against her former employer Freehills claiming that she had been bullied and harassed at work in 2008 and 2009. She alleged the firm discriminated against her on the basis of her age, employment activity and her mental impairment which resulted in her developing suicidal thoughts and a general deterioration in her mental health.

As reported by The Age at the time:

…she said the problems started once she spoke to human resources in April and May 2008 and told them that younger colleagues were getting more work and that she was being excluded by her partners. ”I did it appropriately, I did it respectfully … my younger colleagues were getting most of the client [billable] work, which I can substantiate with these [work] utilisation reports.” …

This case has now been settled by Freehills with Ms Stransky for an undisclosed sum. What is interesting to note, however, is that this appears not to be the first time that Ms Stransky has brought proceedings against a former employer based on the amount of work received (either that, or there are two Nicole Stranskys in Melbourne).

ready to work

Thanks to the anonymous spy who sent us the following link. In 2004, Nicole Stransky initiated proceedings against another former employer Melbourne Inner City Management Pty Ltd. We take the following quotes from the decision in Nicole Stransky v Melbourne Inner City Management Pty Ltd:

[1] On 24 November 2003 Ms Nicole Stransky (the Applicant) lodged an application pursuant to s.170CE of the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (the Act), claiming her employer, Melbourne Inner City Management Pty Ltd (the Respondent) had harshly, unjustly or unreasonably terminated her employment. It was alleged that the Applicant’s number of working hours had been substantially reduced having the effect, due to the consequent significant reduction in the Applicant’s remuneration, of terminating her employment with the Respondent.

[2] The Respondent moved for the dismissal of the application for want of jurisdiction, contending that there had been no termination of the Applicant’s employment by the employer.

[6] The Applicant commenced employment with the Respondent on 12 October 2002 on a casual basis providing administrative support for the Respondent’s property leasing business at various of its city and near city site offices. The Applicant was required, inter alia, to fulfill the role of receptionist at times and in locations at which the permanent receptionist was rostered off or was for other reasons absent. The Respondent maintains a pool of casual staff to provide such coverage across its sites.

[9] With the exception of the first month of her employment when the Applicant worked only seven (7) hours for reasons that are not obvious but perhaps because rosters were already settled for that month, the Applicant regularly worked in excess of thirty hours per calendar month with an average for the period of her employment of approximately forty-two (42) hours per month.

[14] The November roster was issued by Ms Jones on 29 October 2003. The roster provided for only two shifts to be worked by the Applicant during November. The majority of shifts falling on days which the Applicant had worked for a number of months prior to November had been allocated to another casual employee in the November roster. The Applicant claims not to have been consulted or advised prior to the roster’s release of this change to what she claims was her regular shift allocation. The Applicant had not advised of ‘non-availability’ for the shifts falling on days of the week she was accustomed to working.

[15] The Applicant emailed Ms Jones on the day of the November roster’s release ‘expressing my dismay particularly as I had advised her that I would like to continue my regular shifts’ (Exhibit A1). The Applicant further requested advice as to the availability of alternative regular shifts.

[18] The Applicant responded to becoming aware of the updated November roster by sending an email to certain senior Company personnel on the afternoon of 11 November 2003 expressing her dissatisfaction with events that had occurred in relation to rostering and stating that she wished to remain in the Respondent’s employ. Subsequently Ms Jones telephoned the Applicant offering her work for a single shift on 17 November. The Applicant declined the offer on the basis of unavailability.

[19] Of the two shifts for which she was rostered for November the Applicant did not work on 3 November due to illness and 7 November was the last shift the Applicant worked for the Respondent. The Applicant was rostered to work no further shifts for the Respondent in ensuing months and her name was removed from the bottom of the roster document as a possible contact for site offices to fill shifts on an emergency basis.

[22] The Applicant claims that her employment with the Respondent was terminated harshly, unjustly or unreasonably by the Respondent with effect from 7 November 2003 and seeks an order requiring the Respondent to pay an amount in lieu of reinstatement pursuant to s.170CH(6) of the Act.

The Deputy President hearing the dispute ultimately agreed with Stransky and she was awarded a whopping $2,522 for her hardship. Any guesses what Freehills threw her way?

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We reported several weeks ago that former Freehills lawyer Nicole Stranksy was intending to sue her former employer based on claims of age discrimination and continued bullying and harassment. Stranksy claimed she felt humiliated as work was distributed to younger lawyers and she was excluded from large and complex matters. She also alleged that her supervising partners behaved in a manner that constituted bullying and harassment.

Both the AFR and The Age have now reported that Stransky has settled her dispute with Freehills for an undisclosed sum.

isnt it time they grew up?

In response to our post on the dispute, we received several comments which can be found below the post. They give an excellent insight into perceptions prevailing in the industry of the shameful manner in which corporate firms try to “manage out” staff.

We found the following comments to be particularly compelling:

We were dismayed to find out this morning that a rumour, heard several months ago by a Firm Spy team member but later dismissed because it appeared too farcical, is in fact legitimate.

Yes, a perverted former Freehills cleaner with voyeuristic urges took it upon himself one evening late last year, on his nightly dunny-scrub, to photograph an unsuspecting Freehills lawyer perched atop the throne!

Oh behave!

As reported by The Age:

After a fantastic year in 2009 in which the firm won the inaugural Firm Spy Corporate Firm of the Year Award, Freehills has descended into damage control today with a former lawyer alleging the firm discriminated against her.

According to The Age, the case highlights the poor working conditions at law firms.

The lawyer in question is Nicole Stransky, a 50 year old, who was employed at Freehills from 2006. She claims she was bullied and harassed during 2008 and 2009 to such an extent that she developed suicidal thoughts and a general deterioration in her mental health.

It is quite ironic that these allegations are being levelled at the firm, given that Freehills ex-managing partner Peter Butler said at the 2007 Tristan Jepson Memorial Lecture (an event honouring the legacy of a lawyer who committed suicide after battling depression) that:

This is not a matter of competitive edge between professionals, whether barristers or solicitors or warring firms … this is a matter that the profession needs to work on jointly… I’ve seen the [devastating effects of depression] in my family. I’ve seen it with my friends and I’ve seen it with my own firm. I want to do something about it. All of us do. We need to bring this issue of depression to the forefront of our thinking. Not as something that is embarassing and we don’t talk about it; it should not be like that … [we need to] develop a culture where for someone to say to someone else - a friend or colleague - ‘I’m depresssed’ is seen in the same way as any other illness, worthy of no more embarrassment or awkwardness than ‘I’ve got a fever’ or some other problem.

If Stransky’s allegations are to be believed, she was never exposed to a culture in which it was “ok” to say she was depressed. As reported today in The Age:

Her case, now in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, is alleging discrimination on the basis of age, employment activity and her impairment. An earlier unfair dismissal claim was confidentially settled after her job was terminated while she was on sick leave in April last year…

…she said the problems started once she spoke to human resources in April and May 2008 and told them that younger colleagues were getting more work and that she was being excluded by her partners. ”I did it appropriately, I did it respectfully … my younger colleagues were getting most of the client [billable] work, which I can substantiate with these [work] utilisation reports.” …When she returned from six weeks’ sick leave, she said she discovered that Mr Jose had told her colleagues that she had an active WorkCover claim, which she regarded as a serious invasion of her privacy.

Ms Stransky alleged the partners who supervised her - including the former head of the Trade Practices Commission, Bob Baxt - excluded her and isolated her after she raised concerns about her career development with management in early 2008… Ms Stransky alleged that her coach and supervising partner, Chris Jose, spoke to her in an aggressive manner with cutting personal remarks on several occasions after she challenged the lack of work.

A psychiatrist’s report on Ms Stransky, commissioned by Freehills in late 2008, found she had a major depressive disorder with anxiety, panic attacks and features of traumatisation. The report described her as ”highly intelligent, open, honest [and] reliable”, and added, ”I had no reason to doubt the reliability, validity, veracity, accuracy or consistency of her account.” … Ms Stransky said she might never be able to work again as a result of the experience as she was still very ill.

How are working conditions in your office? Is your supervising partner aggressive?

Can anything be done to combat high levels of depression and anxiety within the legal prefession?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

After a long year of denigrating major Australian corporate firms we thought it apt, at this festive time of year, to reverse the trend and pay homage to one firm whose conduct over the preceding year is worthy of recognition.

A round-table Firm Spy discussion was held to discuss this award (we’re giving it the fancy name “Firm Spy Corporate Firm of the Year”) and we’ve settled on Freehills. The firm has acted with considerable integrity over the last year and for a variety of reasons is deserving of this prestigious award. Yes, we’re being serious.

excellence is a habit

But before we delve into this positive stuff, let’s pause for a moment to look at what nincompoop Freehills managing partner and chief executive Gavin Bell said recently in an interview with BRW (26/11):

What is the best piece of advice you have received?

Sitting in a meeting room in Mumbai, I saw a quote from Aristotle: “You are what you do. In this sense, excellent is a habit, not a series of acts”.

A lesson you’ve never forgotten?

Don’t take your clients for granted.

How do you achieve work-life balance?

I don’t see it as an either/or proposition. Work is part of life. You need to enjoy your work. If you don’t, you will probably never achieve balance.

So on this “balanced” view you have of the world, Gav, life’s major lesson involves corporate clients and your guiding ethos, scribbled on a decaying Indian scripture, is to be “excellent” at all costs?

And what about those comments from Freehills partner Tony Woods in last week’s AFR (9/12)?

Freehills partner Tony Woods said employers had become more cautious about their legal risks from Christmas parties over the past five years and this year there was a focus on responsible drinking and monitoring employees at parties to check who was drinking too much.

“The days of unlimited beer and wine on the table are over,” he said.

These comments are at odds with our report in July that Freehills had been luring seasonal clerks with booze-fuelled parties. We quoted an ex-Freehills seasonal clerk who said:

the life of a summer clerk is about much more than research file notes, reviewing documents and client conferences. Summer is the peak period in the social calendar of law firms, with lavish practice group and firm-wide Christmas parties for [sic] to enjoy. Freehills also puts on … weekly Friday night drinks. [T]here are plenty of inter-firm clerk events, including weekly drinks … a cruise and a day at the races…

Woodsy, it doesn’t sound to us like the days of guzzling unlimted grog are over!

But alas, we’re here to award a prize and despite the familiar corporate nonsense reported above, a very deserving recipient is Freehills.

Freehills has taken a consistently measured, moderate approach over the course of a tortuous last year. The firm has not implemented a major redundancy program (AAR, Mallesons, Blake Dawson and Minter Ellison have all reduced headcount significantly since the outset of the GFC). And, unlike (in our opinion) its other major competitor Clayton Utz, when it’s media man Gavin Bell told the AFR last week that Freehills “took the view that we were going to retain people, that we were not going to lay off people, that that was a last resort”, it is actually truth. Recall the “Claytons Redundancies”?

Instead, we’re informed that the firm took the unique approach of managing staff levels by seconding an inordinate number of staff to clients, sometimes at cost. The partners therefore took a financial hit. But in the process, they fostered a deeper relationship with clients, kept staff happy with a chilled-out few months in another office, and will be able to respond to the upward trend without recourse to recruitment agencies (who charge a premium for their services).

The innovative means by which Freehills has proactively sought to retain staff is also witnessed in its development of the “executive counsel” role: a kind of pit-stop before partnership. Whereas we’re told Mallesons knocked on the door of many of its senior associates at the time of its voluntary redundancy scheme and informed them that partnership was a very distant prospect, Freehills created a new role to keep staff happy and motivated. Yes, we maligned the “executive counsel” role at the time of its introduction, but now viewed in the context of the Freehills’ conduct over the year it is clear that the firm was seeking to be innovative and to promote staff retention. Freehills was also transparent at the time about the need to maintain the value of equity points (which initially elicited our angry post).

But more than its novel, transparent approach to managing and staff, Freehills has been the first to act on pay. It is to be emphatically commended for this because, we believe, each of the other firms have been waiting for a major competitor to act before they themselves swing into action. Look at Blake Dawson for example: presently rumoured to be a whopping 20% over budget. Freehills has been transparent about its process and has had the integrity to frame its decision-making with reference to partner profit (we will share the money if partners make more money, but wont if they don’t). We haven’t seen another firm couch the pay freeze in these terms. Honesty is a wonderful thing, even if it comes from the mouths of disgustingly rich partners who are deliberating over whether their preference is for $1,500,000.00 or $1,475,000.00 this financial year.

So Mr Gavin Bell and Team Freehills, this has been an excellent adventure. The Firm Spy commends you for acting with the least disregard for employees and their interests of the major corporates in 2009. The award and the glory is yours.

An infinitely wise Greek fellow once said to me after taking a major toke of some prehistoric herb - “you are what you do. In this sense, excellent is a habit, not a series of acts”. Let’s hope we haven’t just seen a series of acts.

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When you’ve implemented a redundancy scheme that has given rise to a 25% constriction in the number of senior associates populating the office, it is time to speak out in media, ramp up the PR machine, and sell to staff/the public the rationale of such action.

Accordingly, we saw Mallesons Chief Executive partner Robert Milliner quoted in yesterday’s AFR as follows:

‘Milliner said the size of the firm had been adjusted to reflect falling work volumes and a recovery was not likely in the medium term… “most of our clients here and overseas have gone through cost constraints, or because of the disruption of the debt markets have not been able to raise leverage to do the [M&A] activity they have done before”.

This comes just a few days after Mallesons spokeswoman Kate Rimer was reported to be:

cautious about the recruitment market’s likely rate of recovery, particularly given prevailing conditions in former recruitment hot spots overseas. “I think overall we will see a gradual pick-up in recruitment activity, but nothing significant until at least the middle of next year,” she said. “Historically we have lagged much of the economy going into and coming out of downturns. We are seeing a similar pattern with the GFC, where law firms are lagging many of the economic indicators by six-plus months.

Err… ‘Busta’

The Australian economy added near 100,000 jobs between September and November

Putting Milliner & Rimer’s comments in the context of justifying major staff departures is one thing, but putting them beside the comments, made in today’s AFR by Freehills Chief Gavin Bell, makes them look like something of a piss-take:

”[Freehills] took the view that we were going to retain people, that we were not going to lay off people, that that was a last resort. And we kept recruiting. It will probable take a while for full activity to return but I think the trend is up, rather than down. It is a trend up from a plateau that was nowhere near as deep as we thought it would be.”

And while the Mallesons workforce has been reduced considerably, Freehills has increased non-lawyer staff by 8.5% this year. Mallesons, a firm that posted revenue that exceeded Freehills by $58million in 2008/2009, despite having less partners and apparently less staff, is forshadowing no recovery in the medium term, while Freehills thinks the trend is up.

Is Milliner ‘buying time’ to keep the pay freeze in place? Is a Freehills pay thaw on the way?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

Let’s kick off this fabulous Friday with a revised version of our report into Freehills lawyer salaries. Together with Minter Ellison, Freehills is Australia’s equal second largest firm by revenue. In 2008/2009, the firm reported revenue of $493million.

Top partners are reported to have earned $1,900,000.00.

This is how they apparently remunerate their staff.

1.9 Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillion!

Firm Spy cannot confirm these statistics. They come from anonymous sources.

Sydney

Graduate

Admitted 2009. Daily billable target - 4.5 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - N/A. Gross package 2009/2010 - $70,000 + 9%. Perks - blackberry; free gym; subsidised further education

0-1 Years PQE

Admitted between July 2008 and June 2009. Daily billable target - 7.5 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - $70,000. Gross package 2009/2010 - $70,000. Perks - free fruit; free gym; purchase additional leave; subsidised further education

1-2 Years PQE

Admitted between July 2007 and June 2008. Daily billable target - 5.5 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - $68,500. Gross package 2009/2010 - $82,000. Perks - free lunch once per week; free gym; subsidised further education; purchase additional leave.

Several entries quote the above, while several quote the figures below. ??????????

Admitted between July 2007 and June 2008. Daily billable target - 6 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - $85,000. Gross package 2009/2010 - $85,000. Perks - free fruit; free gym; subsidised further education

3-4 Years PQE

Admitted between July 2005 and June 2006. Daily billable target - 7.5 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - $95,000. Gross package 2009/2010 - $95,000. Bonus - $5000. Perks - free fruit; free gym; subsidised further education

6-7 Years PQE

Admitted between July 2002 and June 2003. Daily billable target - 7.5 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - $170,000. Gross package 2009/2010 - $185,000. Perks - blackberry; free fruit;; free gym; subsidised further education

10+ Years PQE

Admitted before 1999. Billable target - 7.5 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - $205,000. Gross package 2009/2010 - $205,000. Bonus - $22,000. Perks - blackberry; free gym; subsidised further education

Melbourne

Graduate

Admitted after June 2009. Daily billable target - 4.5 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - $63,000. Gross package 2009/2010 - $63,000. Perks - free fruit; purchase additional leave; subsidised further education.

0-1 Years PQE

Admitted between July 2008 and June 2009. Daily billable target - 6 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - $64,000. Gross package 2009/2010 - $64,000. Perks - free fruit; subsidised further education

3-4 Years PQE

Admitted between July 2005 and June 2006. Daily billable target - 6 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - $95,000. Gross package 2009/2010 - $98,000. Perks - free fruit; subsidised further education

4-5 Years PQE

Admitted between July 2004 and June 2005. Daily billable target - 6 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - $115,000. Gross package 2009/2010 - $130,000. Perks - blackberry; free fruit; subsidised further education.

8-9 Years PQE

Admitted between July 2000 and June 2001. Daily billable target - 7 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - $155,000. Gross package 2009/2010 - $155,000. Perks - blackberry; subsidised further education

Brisbane

Graduate

Admitted between July 2008 and June 2009. Daily billable target - 4.5 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - $60,000. Gross package 2009/2010 - $60,000. Perks - free fruit; college of law; study leave; subsidised further education.

Perth

0-1 Years PQE

Admitted between July 2008 and June 2009. Daily billable target - 6 hours. Gross package 2008/2009 - $65,000. Gross package 2009/2010 - $65,000. Perks - free fruit; free gym; subsidised further education

Send the Firm Spy your news and views