Since we reported a few weeks ago on the harbinger of top-tier lawyers departing their firms to start afresh at the up-and-coming (and apparently highly salaried) offices of Gilbert + Tobin, there has been no end of spies ready to criticize the firm.

Take this, for example, received from an anonymous spy over the weekend:

Dearest FirmSpy,

As you know, the concerned public of the Internet and IP lawyers everywhere were buzzing this week for Justice Cowdroy’s decision in Roadshow Films v iiNet (No 3). The film companies were represented by our good friends at G+T and iiNet by Herbert Greer.

After the decision, Neil Gane of Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) made a statement expressing his great disappointment with the judge’s decision. A video of Mr Gane’s statement is shown here:

Note the gentleman on the left of Mr Gane, Michael Williams, partner of G+T. Mr Williams is the tough copyright litigator who helped Universal Music to victory in the Cooper and Kazaa cases. However, like his clients, Mr Williams did not look very tough on Thursday. His eyes appear downcast and his ‘countenance’ (pun intended) differs markedly in expression from his picture on the G+T website:
I guess G+T partners are human too?
  

Excellent question! Are Gilbert + Tobin partners human? If being charitable is a measure of human-ness, then perhaps the answer is ‘no’, following the rumour also sent us over the weekend from another anonymous spy:

Who quietly left Gilbert + Tobin on Friday because they’d been accused of doing too much pro bono work?

Yes, who did leave? If you know the answer, please tell the Firm Spy!

Rubbing salt into the fresh knife-wound is this, also received over the weekend from an anonymous G+T spy:

 As a lawyer who cut my teeth at one of the top tier firms, and who is now at G+T, I can offer some words of warning for any Mallesons lawyers thinking of moving to the “hoi polloi” end of town.

Although the money is better, and depending on the practice, the work interesting and stimulating, G+T lawyers work with very little support, bare bones research resources and second rate IT systems (the firm’s email systems were significantly “slowed” twice in recent week). Also working late nights and weekends are a very frequent occurrence which makes the firm’s official policy of after-hours meals in “emergency situation only” both tight and puzzling. The firm makes you work for that extra bit in
your back pocket, many times over.

The training for junior lawyers does not compare with the training provided by the top tier firms; and career progression for mid level lawyers is nowhere near as structured as it should be for a firm of G+T’s
size. And if you are used to the elitist approach of the top tier firms and the concomitant high quality of output, the “close enough is good enough” approach of many of the G+T partners can be incredibly frustrating. On top of all this the firm’s offices look like they haven’t been refurbished since the early 1990s, and the reticence of the firm’s leadership to spend money on new or expanded digs is resulting in more and more lawyers being forced to share smaller and smaller offices.

There is also an open question about how long G+T will be able to grow its Telstra practice, as Telstra is used to demanding an incredibly high level of quality from its external lawyers. With some G+T partners used to running matters with lean teams, the lack of what might be called “quality control” over some of the work being sent to Telstra has caused some dissatisfaction in the Telstra ranks (at least one Telstra legal group rated G+T a zero in a recent survey of its satisfaction with the firm’s performance). One way that all firms attempt to build their relationship with Telstra is to “embed” lawyers on secondment in the various Telstra practice groups. The problem for G+T is that it lacks the number of lawyers to do this is an sustainable manner for extended periods of time.  And this just means that more work is done by less lawyers at G+T.

Lastly, the Melbourne office is still being run out of serviced offices, with no announcement yet about a permanent location. Read into that what you will.

With these “downcast countenances”, the apparent lack of charity, a “close enough is good enough” attitude, dodgey offices, the “emergency situation only” after-hours meals and apparently oppressive working hours, is G+T really as ‘top-tier’ as Danny Gilbert would have us believe?

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We reported last week the rumour that Mallesons might need to prepare for an exodus of lawyers, in particular from its Melbourne office, in light of the emergence of a new Gilbert + Tobin office in the city.  In response to that post we received the following comments from an anonymous (ostensibly a Mallesons) spy:

Firm Spy is always good for a laugh. If only you guys had the balls to apply the blow torch to Gilbert & Tobin the way you do to other firms. You read like a PR outfit for G&T. It’s not even subtle.

Clearly our friend missed the berating we gave Danny Gilbert over his use of the word “sanguine”.

In any event, we’re always keen to moderate any biases in our reportage, so this got us digging around for some dirt on G+T. Thankfully, two anonymous tips have come through over the last week, meaning we didn’t have to dig too far.

First, we received this in response to last week’s post from an anoymous spy:

I suggest the lawyer from Mallesons does his homework…

G+T is known for being a sweat shop, yes the money is good but does it make up for being overworked and having very little resources and support around you… Remember all the benefits of a large firm with L&D, KM etc etc

Not to mention there are some dysfunctional partners at that firm, just check out how many partners have been and gone from G+T in the last 5 years, it is a lot higher than other firms.

We couldn’t find the statistical evidence to support the partner attrition rate and the claims about it being a “sweat shop”, however we did receive the following from another anoymous tipster earlier this week:

What the legal news sector has failed to observe in its reporting on the “coup” by G+T to secure some of Telstra’s work for a fixed fee is that staff at G+T will suffer greatly from the deal. In the first place, there will be the workers who are stuck running errands into the wee hours for Telstra, with no billing upside. In the second place, the partners, who have left major firms with the hope that G+T will offer greater performance-based remuneration will find that the opposite is true. You can work to your heart’s content for Telstra under this arrangement, just don’t expect your pocket to get any fatter!

I think Danny has been very canny in this deal. He is hoping to forge a deep connection with Telstra, to understand its business, only so that in future he can use that expertise to leverage a traditional, billable-unit fee arrangement in future. I guess time will tell.

Can Mallesons lawyers, pondering a move to Gilbert + Tobin, expect an even bigger workload? Will the hours be longer? Is G+T a “sweat shop”?

Should G+T revolutionary billing arrangement with Telstra actually be called a “fixed-fee-billable-unit arrangement”?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

Over the last 12 months we have at various times reported on rumours, received by us from anonymous sources, that 2010 would see a stunning exodus of lawyers from major Australian law firms. In particular, we reported that the firms who have stiffed junior lawyers over pay and threats of redundancy would see a considerably higher than normal rate of attrition.

We were not surprised to see those rumours refuted last week by AAR P&D director Susan Ferrier and Freehills HR director Gareth Bennett in an article published by our friends at Lawyers Weekly. There is nothing quite like planting a seed of doubt as to the prevalence of jobs in the market to allay employee motivation to depart. Astute media-watchers will note, of course, that economists were quoted confidently asserting in a Business Spectator article penned a mere 4 days prior to the Lawyers Weekly article that the “peak in unemployment has passed”.

So where will the exodus of lawyers go? Obviously, we cannot answer that question in every instance, but in the case of Mallesons, a firm we consider leader of the pack in terms of exodus potential (very low pay, apparently highest working hours), things just became a little clearer.

This from an anoymous Mallesons spy recently:

Mallesons partners must reconsider their current, stringent view on remuneration, the reported 44% profit margin, and they must do so quickly. I am presently considering a far more generous offer from Gilbert + Tobin to join its new Melbourne office and right now I see no compelling reason to stay at the firm. By market rates, my remuneration is appalling and a Red Balloon voucher, purchased en masse for a discount, does nothing fix the situation. Partners should be advised that things need to change, and quickly, or G+T might just land the entirety of Telstra’s work along with dozens of Mallesons lawyers.

As reported by AFR (11/12/09):

G+T managing partner Danny Gilbert snared a large chunk of Mallesons’ work from Telstra earlier this year after offering to provide unlimited advice for a fixed fee… G+T has appointed 5 new partners in the past 6 months, & its partnership has grown by 7.4%. G+T is also growing in geographic terms. It will open its first office in Melbourne soon. The move is client led - Telstra’s [general counsel] Will Irving is based there… Gilbert says … “Telstra was looking for a broader engagement with the firm across all of activites the firm has expertise in and we were looking for a fee arrangement that had the best prospect of expanding our connections across what is a very large corporation”.

The article goes on to mention more bad news for Mallesons:

G+T also announced last week it had convinced highly regarded private equity specialist [and former Mallesons partner] Peter Cook to join the firm.

Are you considering changing firms? If so, why?

Tell the Firm Spy first!

In a relatively harmless scoop usually reserved for our friends at ALB or Lawyers Weekly, the Firm Spy can today reveal that the incredible expansion of Gilbert + Tobin will now see it emerge as a player in the Melbourne legal market.

As reported by a G+T spy over the weekend:

Danny Gilbert has just made a speech confirming that Gilbert + Tobin will open in Melbourne, FYI.

It is hardly surprising that G+T is proposing to open new offices. It was noted in the BRW (1/10) that:

Telstra has adopted a retainer arrangement with Gilbert + Tobin [described as] “a fixed fee that covers a substantial amount of work.

Presumably the fixed-fee arrangement is lucrative enough for G+T to take on this massive amount of work, and with such a guaranteed amount of money coming into the firm, now doubt a new office down south will not break the bank.

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After trawling the spectrum of news publications for months in search of something newsworthy on emerging national law firm Gilbert & Tobin, we today stumbled across a short remark from managing partner Danny Gilbert.

When asked how he felt about the economic outlook in today’s AFR in light of the fact that his firm appointed a paltry one partner this year, Gilbert replied:

‘sanguine.’

For those of you who, like us, don’t know the definition of ‘sanguine’, here it is:

ADJECTIVE

Im bloody optimistic!

1. Of the color of blood; red.
2. Of a healthy reddish color; ruddy; a sanguine complexion
3. Having blood as the dominant humour in terms of medieval physiology
4. Having the temperament and ruddy complexion formerly thought to be characteristic of a person dominated by this humor; passionate.
5. Cheerfully confident; optimisitc

So, in relation to the GFC, is Gilbert blood red (with anger?). feeling bloody healthy, having a bloody laugh, or just bloody optimistic? We watched a recent interview with Danny to get to the bottom of this and have extracted some quotes below:

we built the firm by identifying market niches… and attracting key, important partners from other law firms.. who perhaps felt they were not able to achieve what they wanted to achieve in the firms that they were with… we were prepared to take risks with people and give people a go in ways that other law firms might have been a little bit more conservative.

Has Danny taken one too many risks with underachieving partners? Boy-o-boy, that’d make us blood-red with anger too!

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!