Forgotten Canadian rocker Alanis Morissette was once big news; she shot to international stardom in 1995 with the release of her hit album Jagged Little Pill. Staggeringly, this album remains the best-selling debut album by a female artist in the US and the highest selling debut album worldwide, with 30 million albums being sold globally.

its a deal!

The first single off the album, featuring Flea and Dave Navarro from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers,  was the smash hit You Oughtta Know; a song about an adulterous ex-lover of Morissette’s. The identity of the ex-boyfriend is a matter of controversy, with Wikipedia flagging both of Friends star Matt LeBlanc and Full House dad Bob Saget as potential candidates. Although the identity may be unclear, the song includes some very clear instances of curious sexual behaviour, including a reference to Ms Morrisette performing fellatio on her ex-boyfriend in a movie theatre.

We believe that Canadian Judge Lori Douglas must have been listening to Alanis when she volunteered to be pornographically photographed by her lawyer husband performing oral sex on him, dressed in bondage, chains and with sex toys.

The photos have since been leaked to a porn website.

According to CBC News:

If pictures of you naked end up on an internet site, it’s quite difficult to say you have the credibility to be a judge… I think the facts are sufficiently suspect to warrant disclosure and to raise very important questions as to whether such a person should have been appointed a judge

It turns out that the complainant (if his story is to be believed) was groomed by the Judge’s husband to sleep with Justice Douglas as part of an elaborate interacial sex fantasy. It allegedly involved the couple placing nude photos of Justice Douglas on the website Darkcavern with an advert flagging that a “smooth black man” was wanted:

The complainant first met Justice Douglas’ husband when he retained him to handle his divorce. Several months later, according to CBC News:

Chapman said [Justice Douglas’ husband] invited him out for a drink and mentioned a porn website devoted to interracial sex, particularly black men and white women.

Mr Chapman alleges he was provided with an internet address and a password and instructed to look at a section entitled “Our White Princesses” where white females attract black men by posting photos of themselves. According to CBC News:

Do you know better than to post nude pictures of your spouse on the internet? You oughtta know!

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

Yesterday’s porkbelly reminded us of something we wrote a few months ago …

The image of a pig’s rectum probably isn’t what most corporate Australian firms would consider an appropriate emblem to attract business to the firm through internet marketing campaigns. People already associate pigs with dirt and grime, so if you went looking for a lawyer and instead hit a website with a pig’s anus staring at you (yes, the actual ring!), you might think there is a better qualified individual on the market to assist you with your legal issues.

daunting pork

But this hasn’t stopped the marketing gurus at O’Reilly Stevens Bovey Lawyers - a boutique outfit operating out of a sty Cairns - from proudly placing a picture of a pig’s backside, tail up, on its firm’s website homepage.

Prefatory words appear at the top of the picture, rhetorically asking:

So you don’t think you need legal advice…

Then viewers are directed to the piglet’s bottom.

A labradore, with a newspaper in its mouth, also appears on another of the firm’s webpages, as does a brace of ducks. You might find yourself asking:

What on earth does a dog, a duck and a pig’s arse have to do with legal advice?

WE DONT KNOW.

We thought it was strange that the farm firm would use the buzz words “Real people, real solutions”, yet use images of animals across its website.

Is someone telling pork pies? We invite you to ham-it-up in the comments to this post with your views.

Here are the thoughts of the anonymous spy who snorted tipped us off to the site (excellent work - your comments and the site had us rolling in the mud with laughter!):

Ok so this isn’t really news but some things just need to gain wider attention. I was looking through the criminal law specialists in Queensland today and I came across a guy called Stephen O’Reilly. For all I know Stephen is a normal guy and a great lawyer but surely questions need to be asked when an individual is a principal of a firm who puts together a website such as this…. http://www.osblawyers.com. Initially I thought I’d entered a typo and stumbled across some sort of farm porn (not for the first time admittedly) but, no, it’s true. The boys at OBS (and I’m not talking about the Order of St Benedict) decided that this was a suitable image for their homepage.

We thought the pig’s arse comedy (if that’s what it is) went particularly well with the firm’s “Estate Planning” webpage, on which the following is written:

It’s easy to put off thinking about the unpleasant topics of dying or becoming incapable of managing your own affairs…the staff at O’Reilly Stevens Bovey have the understanding to assist in the administration of deceased estates…we endeavour to make this often daunting task as easy as possible during your difficult time.

Yes a BLT would make this all, well, just a little less “daunting”! Perhaps we could have the labradore transport the Will to the office for safekeeping?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

We reported a few months back on the enterprising way that Hatzis Lawyers is cornering the market by ‘contributing their might to the smart state of Queensland’. Interestingly, it seems that a more lionhearted effort is presently being used in the US.

call us when you bust a cap, sister

According to the Urban Dictionary:

mofo:
	Short for mother f*cker. A person who thinks they are the sh*t, dressed down with sagging pants, a high need for a belt, too much gold to make the national reserve jealous, and an attitude that stems from not having parents who knew how to refrain from the use of crack cocaine. “Hey Dave, look at that putz…man what a mofo.”

So if you’re a crack addicted mofo, taking a wrap for busting a cap, who you gonna call? A fellow mofo, of course!

It is this straightfoward logic which appears to have compelled eminent US law firm Morrison Foerster, a firm employing over 1000 lawyers, to have purchased the internet url www.mofo.com. Yes, mofos need lawyers too and who better to call than a mofo brother?

Like most major law firms, MoFo has a section on its website dedicated to identifying to future employees that it has a track record of being a ‘diversity’ employer.

Consistently ranked as a top law firm for diversity.  For 2007–2008 we ranked:  #5 Diversity – Minorities; #5 Diversity – Gays & Lesbians; #6 Overall Diversity; and #6 Best Firms to Work Fo.

So a mofo can even get a job there! A professional mofo, if you will. Perhaps most impressive, however, is the section dedicated to ‘Mofo in the Community’. This section makes clear that if a mofo is in trouble with the fuzz a fellow mofo will take a stand. Are you happy that a motherf**king lawyer has got your back?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

Note: we take it on faith that neither Morrison Forster, nor any of its partners or employees, are, in fact, ‘mofos’ in any sense of that term.  We are not affiliated with any of them and express no view as to their services.

According to Wikipedia, there are 33 Australian universtities offering law degrees to prospective students. According to the Australian Law Students’ Association, there are approximately 28,000 law students currently enrolled in a law degree across the nation. Given that a law degree is usually coupled with another degree and the length of a course is 5 years, let’s assume that 5,000 students graduate each year with a law degree.

career prospects are in the shitter

With that staggering figure in mind, one would hope there are a few jobs to go around. But are there?

According to the AFR the answer is ‘not really’. Well, in respect of established Australian law firms, anyhow.

Statistics compiled by the AFR show that the sum total of all graduate positions offered by all major Australian law firms (ie top tier, mid tier and boutique) was 706 in January to July of this year. If we generously double that figure to contemplate offers that will be made in the latter half of this year, that’s 1412 graduate jobs across the nation in major law firms. This means that for some 3,588 graduates in law, unless they can find a job in regional firms, in government, or in some other professional services firm, the hard work at university may have just been a waste of time and money.

Chief Justice Mason famously said in the Hospital Products case that the categories of fiduciary relationship are not closed. Will we ever see the day that a graduate law student attempts to argue that fiduciary obligations are owed by university admissions staff to prosective students to advise, among other things, that their job prospects are in the toilet?

Following on from our story a couple of weeks ago profiling the dramatic reduction in top-tier graduate intakes, we today publish below further evidence that employment prospects for new graduates are languishing in the porcelain.

Thanks to the AFR for the following stats:

Decreases

• Firm: Middletons
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 22
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 26
• Firm: DLA Phillips Fox
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 19
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 27
• Firm: Norton Rose
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 16
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 28
• Firm: Maddocks
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 15
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 16
• Firm: HWL Ebsworth
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 14
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 16
• Firm: Lander & Rogers
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 11
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 12
• Firm: Arnold Bloch Leibler
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 10
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 11
• Firm: Baker & McKenzie
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 10
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 13
• Firm: Holding Redlich
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 9
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 12
• Firm: Herbert Geer
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 7
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 8
• Firm: Piper Alderman
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 7
  Number of graduates January -June 2009:18
• Firm: Sparke Helmore
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 7
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 9
• Firm: Dibbs Barker
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 6
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 12
• Firm: Henry Davis York
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 5
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 7
• Firm: Tresscox
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 5
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 9
• Firm: Gilbert + Tobin
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 4
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 13

Increases

• Firm: Gadens
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 31
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 23
• Firm: Hunt & Hunt
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 5
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 4
• Firm: Griffith Hack
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 5
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 1
• Firm: McCullough Robertson
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 11
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 0
• Firm: Thomson Playford Cutlers
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 10
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 5
• Firm: Hall & Wilcox
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 8
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 7
• Firm: Cooper Grace Ward
  Number of graduates January - July 2010: 7
  Number of graduates January -June 2009: 5

Any ideas what jobless grads should do with their spare time?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

We are about three weeks past of the anniversary date that the Firm Spy was temporarily shut down. We used to appear at www.firmspy.com.au, but had to start afresh at www.firmspy.com (without the .au).

mwahahahahaha

Since that time, we have received well over one million hits on our site. 1,113,415 to be exact (as of 30/6/2010)

Every now and then we reflect on exactly what we are and what we’re trying to achieve. And now is probably as good a time as any to be reflective. Are we a gossip site? A blog? A news source? We don’t really know. However, we think for the most part, we are about trying to keep things as transparent as possible. This is paradoxical, given that we don’t reveal who we are, but we believe this is necessary in order to continue to report without the editorial bias that we see in competitor news media (excepting the AFR occasionally).

Our mission, if we have one, probably starts at univiersities - giving students a clearer picture of precisely what to expect after graduation. Many of our readers are university students. To this end, we read with interest the comments from two university students in an article forming part of the AFR Partnership Survey:

Third year Maquarie University law student Tanja Maley says she hopes to become a partner in a top commercial firm, and everything else - family included - can follow. “I want a fast city life and i want the long hours”, she says. “I don’t think I’d be satisfied if I wasn’t challenged in that respect.”

But fellow student Tahnee Nicholson says that after completing a clerkship at a top national firm and accepting a graduate position, she is concerned about the obstacles facing women. “One of the male partners said to me at one point: “You know, women partners have to sacrifice a lot more to get here than men do,” she says. Successful female partners are described as “ballsy and gutsy women”, she says. Nicholson still wants to become a partner and hopes that “by the time I get to that stage the things expected of a partner will have changed especially for female partners”.

But do students have any idea what being a partner at a major corporate law firm is really like? Sure, they probably know that the cash is good, but what about the day to day life of a partner? What about the isolation from family and friends? AFR Legal Affairs editors James Eyers and Hannah Low gave a fantastic - and in our view 100% correct - insight into the troubles that face partners who, probably feeling estranged from family and friends, decide they might want to temporarily work part time, or with less intensity:

A key reason why changing gears can be problematic is that the equity models of many law firms don’t respond to partners seeking to reduce the amount of profit they receive from the partnership, which is typically determined by allocating points. Even at the firms that have abandoned traditional lock-step equity structures for more performance-based models, reducing points is viewed as a sign of weakness.

Many firms struggle with such requests [to work part time]. It is well known in the industry that “part time” does not necessarily mean fewer hours will be worked. At many firms, part-time partners keep the same billing targets, meaning they have to squash a full-time workload into three or four days. For others, it can simply mean doing the same work from home yet be paid at the part-time rate.

Meanwhile, Dwyer Health consultant Ted Dwyer said that:

historically Australian firms have been unwilling to reduce levels of equity to accommodate flexible working arrangements. “There has been a tradition of de-equitising partners”, he says.

For our student readers thinking about the distant prospect of equity in a law firm, be careful what you wish for. The overwhelming likelihood is that you’ll never get there, but supposing you do, is the fundamentally shallow existence of growing old chained to a desk all that alluring? What about for $1,500,000.00 per year?

But we digress. Today is a celebration of the Firm Spy’s arrival, and let’s not sully it more talk about the corporate partners who feature so prominently in all of our other publications.

Many moons ago, we made the following statement which appears on our “about us“ page:

Because we are professionals ourselves, we know what it’s like, and we have our ear to the ground for the latest gossip and news you won’t hear anywhere else.  So beware: you are being watched.

Given that we’ve now chalked up our millionth hit, perhaps this statement should now read:

Because we are professionals ourselves, we know what it’s like, and we have our ear to the ground for the latest gossip and news you won’t hear anywhere else.  So beware: you are being watched and so are we.

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

When you received your $900 Kevin Rudd stimulus cash, what was your first thought? A flat screen TV? A new dishwasher? How about a couple of prostitutes and a bag of sniff?

ok Ill bring the hookers

This is what Masterchef winner - and former Kelly & Co lawyer - Adam Liaw said on his (incredibly still accessible) Twitter account (5:50pm, 10/4/2009):

Free economic stimulus money application form came in the post. Now the inevitable question: Hookers or blow?

Inevitable indeed .But what will Adam do with the Masterchef winner’s $100,000 … err… booty?

We had a hunch yesterday that Masterchef contestant Adam Liaw - better known amongst Firm Spy readers as the fellow who believes “it is a God-given right for a Prime Minister to host a secret sex party with a bunch of hookers and other Prime Ministers”* - would win the popular Channel 10 TV show for season 2010. So we took the very unusual step of picking up the phone to call Kelly & Co lawyers and spoke with Chairman Michael Durrant to find out a little bit more about Adam Liaw the junior lawyer.

We introduced ourselves as the Firm Spy and thankfully Mr Durrant was unfamiliar with our site. He therefore willingly gave us some information about his recollections of Adam, before reluctantly declining the offer to answer some scripted questions until he had informed himself of our site.

Mr Durrant ultimately looked at our site, spoke with some of his colleagues, and declined an interview with us on the topic of Adam Liaw.

But this didn’t stop us from loosely transcribing the tantalising, off-the-cuff insights he gave us on our first phone call.

Mr Durrant divulged that Adam (who incredibly started with the firm as a 20yo graduate) returned to Kelly & Co a few weeks earlier for a some catch-up drinks. We naturally pondered - was there a gourmet debrecina in a bun with cheese at the catch-up drinks, Mr Durran?

MD: … The fridge and pantry is always stocked-up here at Kelly & Co, so there was plenty to eat and drink!

Really? Food and drink, bought by the firm?

Yes. According to Durran, and to our own very intensive independent research, Kelly & Co Lawyers have taken the lead of major modern-day corporations such as Google by generously providing staff with food and drinks in the firm’s break room. Not “possum poo” fair trade coffee or cancelled cream biscuits, but healthy food, drinks, and a willingness to make junior lawyers feel like an integral part of the firm.

MD: we operate with a much flatter structure than major Australian firms so junior lawyers feel much less like they are simply a cog in a big machine.

And with all this free food and drink around, it is probably little wonder that budding lawyer Adam Liaw developed a taste for the kitchen fineries that would one day lead him to Australia’s most famous kitchen. Thankfully, the break room treats apparently didn’t stop Adam from focusing on his work, with Durrant mentioning that Liaw was regarded by his mentors as a diligent and focused junior lawyer.

But did Mr Liaw give the Kelly & Co break-room fridge a name? Unfortunately, we didnt get a clear answer on this one, although Liaw does appear to have history in naming inanimate kitchen objects:

Naming my furniture. My fridge’s name is Steve.*

Also disappointingly, we didn’t get the opportunity to ask Mr Durrant whether Liaw’s time at Kelly & Co may have prompted Liaw to make the following comment on his Twitter account:

Don’t you ever sit down at your computer when there are all these windows popping at you and emails shouting at you and just think…… I could just burn all this shit to the ground.*

Likewise, we missed the chance to ask Mr Durrant whether he agrees that drinking a Fujizakura microbrew with a side of grilled salmon can turn an ordinary heterosexual male into a “blissful homo”  (from Liaw’s Twitter account):

Watching football on the couch with some grilled salmon, a salad and a Fujizakura microbrew. Blissful, but somehow I feel like a homo.*

But all of this is moot anyhow, because the jury is back in and Adam Liaw is a Masterchef! And by our reckoning, Liaw is Australia’s first Masterchef who apparently has a taste for:

• hookers;
• blow;
• secret sex parties;
  
• blissful homos; and
• burning shit to the ground.

Will you order the “chef’s special” at Liaw’s restaurant?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

* These comments have been deleted from Adam Liaw’s Twitter account since our post of 20 May 2010.

The Firm Spy will soon be comprehensively updating its weekly newsletter. Part of this update will be the inclusion of stories that don’t feature on our website. So if you want to keep up-to-date with all of our gossip, rumours and news, please type your email address in the column to the right underneath the apt heading “weekly newsletter”. Be sure to click the “subscribe” button too.

knock the top off one!

Onto more pressing matters; namely, The Firm Spy 2010 Remuneration Survey. In conjunction with Legal Monkey, we have been asking all our readers from Australian law firms to kindly - and anonymously - enter their remuneration details in an online survey (available here).

We have had an incredible response so far, but still need everyone’s assistance to get accurate pay-brackets across all offices of all firms. So keep up the fantastic work! Enter your details here.

Some of the more colourful comments we have so far received in response to our question “what makes you happy/sad/ambivalent about your firm include:

A graduate from Mallesons in Sydney wrote:

I dont like the fact that most graduates are ignored by their partner/partner pretends they don’t exist. I don’t like the extremely high billable hour target (5 hours before qualification and 7 after) when for most firms it is about two hours lower per day.

A seventh year Freehills lawyer wrote:

Sad (frustrated): the long hours and unpredictability of the long hours. Always expected to be “on call” on Blackberry.

An Allens Arthur Robinson third year wrote:

REALLY frustrated about pay review - I regularly bill at 135% of my billable target, work crazy hours and weekends for an extra $5000?!? I had been holding out for ‘better’ times with a firm I previously felt loyal to - but with all the cutbacks, additional enforced christmas leave time, lack of any form of morale boost and now the poor pay increase, I’m very flat and disenchanted.

The message we are getting from management - not a single reassuring word - they still have more lawyers than they need and want ppl to leave

A Corrs fifth year wrote:

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

A Blake Dawson sixth year wrote:

salary increase not in line with market rate, following no increase last year. Definitely not a market leader, although I suspect others at my level are probably getting paid more. Overlooked in promotions. Feel undervalued.

And our favourite - a second year at Minter Ellison wrote:

Minter Ellison is the cheapest firm in the solar system. Right down to my partner refusing to send paper Christmas cards and sending out an electronic card at 5pm on Christmas eve.

We intend to start posting remuneration information for each of the firms in early August. So you’ve all got weekend work:

• fill in The Firm Spy 2010 Remunerations Survey;
• sign up for our weekly newsletter; and
• consume heavy liquor to drink away the winter blues.

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

Baritone belly-man Matt “I-hide-my-chins-with-a-tea-towel” Preston may have slightly piqued the Firm Spy’s interest in this year’s edition of Masterchef. But nothing, not even a Lander & Rogers chest-waxing featuring Masterchef contestant Peter Kritikides, has come within a lightly-seared cow’s rump of evoking our interest in the show like the allegation that former Clayton Utz lawyer, contestant Claire WInton Burn, had a secret love affair with a MARRIED former colleague.

over-valued?

In mid-June we quoted The Daily Telegraph which reported:

[Claire] is in a relationship with a work colleague at … Clayton Utz … the colleague left his wife and three children for Claire just after the birth of his third child [we have since been informed that the man has only one child]. A recent interview Claire gave to New Idea set a cat among the pigeons at the law firm when Claire named the man as her “partner”, something which also shocked the ex who is struggling at home alone with a baby and two other young ones.

Despite knowing the identity of the alleged male in question, the Firm Spy originally declined to name him. We were concerned that doing so would cause undue stress to the single mother dealing with the marital breakdown allegedly brought on by Masterchef’s Claire Winton Burn, while at once mothering an infant. Nincompoop Highly esteemed paparazzo Jamie Fawcett - who hilariously refers to himself as “an accreditated [sic] journalist” - had an issue with our logic regarding the naming of the cuckold. We think he may have been involved (but we are speculating) in snapping the photos of the gentleman that appear in this week’s edition of Woman’s Day beside the following edited extract of an accompanying article revealing the man’s identity:

Making a rare public appearance outside the Masterchef kitchen, contestant Claire Winton Burn showed off more than just a first look at her lawyer beau Trevor Thomas - she also flaunted a new sparkler on her engagement finger… While Claire has refused to discuss allegations that she was a factor in the break-up of Trevor’s marriage… it seems her relationship is heating up as quickly as the cooking competitiion. Claire’s dazzling new rock suggests the pair have taken the next step - and there’s speculation she will soon be planning a very special menu… for her wedding guests. “If anything, it’s made us stronger,” Claire says of the rumours about her relationship and adds that marriage and babies aren’t out of the question, “One day it’d be lovely to do all those types of things.”

Indeed it would be lovely Claire, but don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Cook them, but don’t fertilise count them!

New Idea reported:

The former work colleagues at Clayton Utz law firm began dating after Trevor, 36, separated from his wife XXXXXX in December 2008, when his only child XXXXX was 22 months old.

It appears that several months before Clayton Utz’s Trevor Thomas allegedly decided to leave his wife and newborn for Claire, he had the temerity to assert “The value is whatever I say it is”. He also dubiously gave the following advice to students considering undertaking a graduate degree at the Melbourne University Law School:

The course obviously involves a great deal of work and commitment and, while it might sound trite, it is the type of degree where the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Consequently, one really needs to make the appropriate amount of time available to devote to study.

Work, commitment, devotion, values; gee Trev, it sounds an awful lot like … A MARRIAGE!

Best of luck with the next one!

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

For beleaguered graduates still on the job-hunt despite graduating many months ago, it appears that the entry-level legal jobs market at the top-tier is still suffering. By comparing the number of graduates recruited in the six months to July 2010, with the same period in 2009, the following statistics from the AFR show each of the seven largest Australian firms has significantly reduced their number of intakes this year.

a law graduate yesterday

• Firm: Mallesons Stephen Jaques
  Number of graduates Jan-July 2010: 91
  Number of graduates Jan-June 2009: 128

• Firm: Freehills
  Number of graduates Jan-July 2010: 86
  Number of graduates Jan-June 2009: 96

• Firm: Minter Ellison
  Number of graduates Jan-July 2010: 78
  Number of graduates Jan-June 2009: 104

• Firm: Allens Arthur Robinson
  Number of graduates Jan-July 2010: 75
  Number of graduates Jan-June 2009: 76

• Firm: Blake Dawson
  Number of graduates Jan-July 2010: 58
  Number of graduates Jan-June 2009: 77

• Firm: Corrs Chambers Wesgarth
  Number of graduates Jan-July 2010: 39
  Number of graduates Jan-June 2009: 53

• Firm: Clayton Utz
  Number of graduates Jan-July 2010: 35
  Number of graduates Jan-June 2009: 76

While these statistics are very bad news for those who have already graduated, the statistics below may be of considerable relevance to those still undertaking their studies and wondering where they will find their graduate job. Last year we compiled an analysis of the number of seasonal clerkships offered by each of the top-tier firms mentioned above and compared that number with the number of graduate positions offered by each of the same firms. In so doing, we were able to formulate a a percentage for each firm representing the likelihood that a seasonal clerk would ultimately receive a graduate offer. In 2009, the probability that seasonal clerks would be offered a graduate position were (approximately) as follows:

• Corrs Chambers Westgarth 80% (53/66)
• Clayton Utz 65% (96/147)
• Freehills 63% (120/190)
• Mallesons 54% (135/248)
• Allens Arthur Robinson 45% (94/206)
• Blake Dawson 45% (85/185)

At a time when there is still a tight jobs market, university students with several seasonal clerkship offers should probably pay attention to these stats when considering where they should spend the summer.

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

If you thought it was enough to one day mature into a ‘high-profile lawyer’, walk a day in the shoes of MK Law lawyer Michael Kuzilny:

“What do I do? Well, I’m a high profile lawyer, a legal commentator in the mass media and the winner of the Best Male Presenter award at the Antenna Awards, amongst other things.”

Those “other things” are helpfully described on a website dedicated to publicising Kuzilny’s book, entitled Success: You Can Make It!:

Michael Kuzilny is Australia’s foremost teenage success mentor, a lawyer, a legal commentator, a

put me on the news, bro!

motivational speaker, TV presenter, and international success consultant. He is also the author of A life in Crime and is currently working on his 3rd book called Super Relationships Made Simple.

How does he do it, you ask? Thankfully, close attention to Kuzilny’s “International Success Consulting Tips” (available here), reveal how Mike has evolved (“I was … a copper in those days… but then I evolved”) into the modest all-rounder he is today:

• I learned to live with no fear;
• Life is a daring adventure, or nothing at all;
• I’ve done it all;
• There is fear and the opposite is freedom; live in freedom;
• Once we die it’s payback time;
  
• Be independent to the good opinion of other people; follow your dreams.

This ideological bedrock has permitted Kuzilny to “stay young, stay youthful”. This appears to have had the added benefit that Mike can relate to Australia’s young:

I always call my younger clients “bro”… I call my clients “bro” a lot of the time and … they love it.

It is by being a “bro” that Kuzilny has been able to shape the impressionable minds of the young in positive ways:

I made a CD for some of my younger clients called The Ten Laws of Success and I would say “listen to this on the way back from court” and it makes a difference.

Yet incredibly, he wants more. High-profile lawyering; teenage success consulting; motivational speaking; international success consulting; authoring; legal commentating in the mass media; winning the Best Male Presenter Award at the Antenna Awards; evolving into a bro — it is not enough!

Kuzilny sees himself as a future news-reader. His youtube “showreel” contains a news-reader audition, prepared by his talent agency Epic Management. Unfortunately, however, it appears that the news-rooms haven’t been beating down the door. Kuzilny’s Epic Talent profile reads: “Status: Available”.

Would Kuzilny be a ratings bonanza? Send the Firm Spy your news and views!