Bringing you the big stories first, the Firm Spy can today reveal some jaw-dropping rumours about national law-firm Tresscox.

We revealed in May rumours of redundancies at Tresscox, a story later picked up, and confirmed by, other news media. The firm did not comment at the time on the full extent of the redundancies.

We received the following information from a Tresscox spy earlier in the week, revealing what the firm spokesperson neglected to mention:

… it is difficult to exaggerate how bad things are here right now. The redundancies that you reported in Melbourne, also occurred here Sydney and also Brisbane. That is, each of our offices was affected… Partner revenue is rumoured to have gotten to a point where salaried partners are presently earning more than equity partners…

If this rumour is true, it would affront recent claims that mid-tier firms are ‘less affected’ by the GFC.  Is this true?  (We don’t know.)  Is your firm feeling the GFC heat?

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Ever since we revealed rumours that suggested Deloitte has been underhandedly managing people out of the firm, rather than

forthrightly announcing redundancies, we have received a flood of emails from Deloitte spies reinforcing Firm Spy claims.

We received the following on the weekend:

I am working in Deloitte Risk Services Division and over the past few weeks a hand full of people have left (or asked to leave, they have not been not officially fired, but i am sure they have left unwillingly). The reason is unknown. I have heard different stories from different people, e.g. not meeting sales target, under-performed, internal politics and etc.

Then this:

I currently work at Deloitte and I can say that there are significant numbers of people being ‘performance managed’ out of the firm. This process has been going on for a number of months and is their way of reducing headcount without having official redundancies.

If true, this new era of ‘performance-management’ could be a short one for some. Now back to work already!

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Disquiet is rumoured to have descended over Gadens’ PR and senior management in recent days over the way the firm, through its departing Chief Operations Officer, has responded to claims that secret-sackings had occurred.

At first instance, the firm line was that there had been some ‘comings and goings’, but this later matured to a more encouraging line that the firm was ‘hiring, not firing’.

The more recent comments were made by Chief Operating Officer Jon Denovan who, in the same article, was also at pains to identify that:

• he is leaving Gadens; and
• he wants a job in radio.

A Gadens spy had the following points to make about Denovan’s article:

…his comments will make the inevitable pay freeze look like a ridiculous ploy to increase partner yields, when I think the reality is that our work flows and revenue has decreased along with all the other major law firms.

Do you think it is appropriate for high-profile lawyers to use the media to spell out their imminent availability to future employers?

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The Firm Spy revealed way back  in April that national law firm Holding Redlich had made redundancies. However, it appears we gravely underestimated the number of sackings which took place.

In an article appearing in the Financial Review, it is highlighted that the firm has lost nine staff, including seven property lawyers. Managing partner Chris Lovell is quoted as saying:

the market is very much a day-to-day proposition. One day it’s looking terrific and the next it’s looking pretty ordinary.

It appears that Holding Redlich has taken a ‘sack-now-ask-questions-later’ approach to the GFC, though as Lovell notes:

[the firm] has benefited from a very pronounced trickle down as big clients, now reluctant to pay top-tier prices, move to smaller firms. This should leave the firm in a much stronger position… those who take advantage of … opportunities … come out best at the end. That’s what we are entirely focused on… It’s a bit painful on the way through…

Growing pains or sacking opportunism?  You decide.  Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

The Firm Spy has championed the cause of Deloitte for months now. It was our understanding that whereas the partners at KPMG, PwC and Ernst & Young readily put personal profit ahead of the hopes and dreams of now-redundant workers, Deloitte partners were different.

This opinion has, however, taken a battering with the revelations contained in the comments sent to the Firm Spy from a Deloitte spy yesterday:

…it is not fair that the accounting community is unaware that Deloitte has reduced its workforce considerably in recent months. Your site has reported the redundancies at the other major accounting firms, though you have not yet mentioned the happenings here. A broad recruitment freeze is in place and the partners, more than at any time in my five years here, are ‘managing’ people out of the firm. Performance reviews are still continuing and it is expected many more will consequently lose their jobs…

With a new lease to pay and a GFC upon it, should Deloitte simply follow its competitors and announce major redundancies?

Is it wrong to go on a silent sacking-spree?

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Always first to break the big news stories, as was the case with the DLA Phillips Fox mass redundancies, the Firm Spy can today also reveal that many of the sacked workers are rumoured to have been precedents staff.

We received the following anonymous tip last night:

What firm would get rid of the majority of their precedents team? DLA Phillips Fox, of course.

If this is true, one would imagine there are some understandably unhappy campers among the ex-Foxers.  Like most BigLaw firms, the precedents team customarily ensure that standard documents, which are used by lawyers as a starting-point and then modified to suit a particular client’s needs, are constantly updated to reflect changes in the law.  A new job for the winter clerks, perhaps?

The Firm Spy wishes to thank DLA Phillips Fox Media Relations Consultant Clare Buttner for her previous comments and emails and invites her clarify the roles of the sacked workers.

Always quick to act when partner profits are jeopardised, having been among the very first firms to sack workers at

the outset of the GFC, DLA Phillips Fox is apparently at it again.

We received the following anonymous tip this evening:

Its expected that at least half of the 2008 DLA Phillips Fox Articled Clerks in the Melbourne office will be made redundant tomorrow. The ACs haven’t been placed in their permenant teams yet, despite being admitted in April. HR has been promising to tell them who is staying and who is going for a while now, but finally set this Friday as the day in the past week. They will be called in individually tomorrow sometime. A good source at the firm states that this is a prelude to much larger redundancies, and that all lawyers are nervous. Also, due to the pay freeze recently announced, the 2009 graduates who have just started are being paid more than their 2008 counterparts (while they still have a salary of course).

If true, this would make DLA Phillips Fox the first national law firm to make two-waves of redundancies and freeze lawyer pay. Added to that, Melbourne ACs have been left out in the cold for many months.

Update: another “Ex-Fox” source has confirmed that “lawyers were laid off this afternoon (at least in Melbourne)”.  Looks like the axe has been swung.  More news at it comes to hand.

Further update: the bitter tirades from ex-Foxers continue to pour in.  Another tipster wrote to us with details of this morning’s redundancies at DLA:

3 of our 2008 ACs got the boot today, but many of the remainder got put on only 5 or 12 month contracts, very few were made permenant offers. Time to polish up the CVs. A host of second year and above lawyers also got the heave-ho today. Ruthless stuff.

Ruthless indeed.  If true, this is a devastating blow to all concerned.  The move to short-term contracts — with their obvious appeal to firm management, who get the best of both worlds — bodes ill for junior professionals everywhere.

One Tresscox firm spy sends word that at least a dozen workers have been made redundant at mid-tier firm Tresscox.

The sackings, part of the firm’s response to falling workflows and increased capacity, affected junior lawyers in the M&A group.

There is no word from Tresscox on whether this will be the only sackings or whether further redundancies are planned.

Do you think more workers will be dicked around at Tresscocks?  Is your job safe?

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It has emerged that Minter Ellison has sacked dozens of lawyers and support staff mere weeks after implementing a

firm-wide pay freeze.

As noted in the Financial Review:

the lawyers range from senior associates to juniors in the property, construction and finance practice areas.

The chief executive John Weber claims that no graduate roles were affected and there were no plans for further redundancies.

This is the second wave of redundancies at Minter Ellison, making it the first national Australian law firm to freeze pay and sack workers in separate waves of redundancies. Minters also evidently took the knife to the firm Christmas budget.

After sacking workers, freezing pay and implementing budget cutbacks, is there much left for Minters to do in order to respond to the GFC?

Will partners simply need to adapt to earning less money?

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In contrast to Australian law firms which have been forthright about lawyers and support staff redundancies, and those that have even announced that office stationary supplies are being reduced, mid-tier firm Herbert Geer has apparently gone on a silent sacking-spree.

Herbert Geer first dropped the Rundle, and now the Bundle!

According to one source:

Herbert Geer has let some of their corporate lawyers from their Brisbane and Melbourne offices go within the past few months. They seem to have escaped attention for doing so, however, because they are only mid-tier (if even that). Like other firms they didn’t have the courage to pucker up and simply admit to the lawyers they culled that they were being let go due to the economic downturn. No, that would mean they would have to on some level fcking acknowledge reality. Instead they claimed that the lawyers they let go weren’t pulling their weight and were lousy employees. I guess at the end of the day they haven’t acted all too differently from other firms. But the moral of the story is if someone was working for a firm that was at least up front with them and the fact they were being made redundant, at least that has some modicum of honesty to it.

Following this critique, a spokesperson commented that the firm had

made two or three people redundant and that we, as do all businesses, have redundancies from time to time.

Has a fear of redundacies descended on Herbert Geer? What about at your firm?