Last week the Firm Spy contacted the genial AAR spokesman Chris Fogarty in the hope of getting a comment on rumours we have heard that the Allens partnership is presently deliberating over a massive firm-wide involuntary redundancy scheme.

Yes, a new wave of layoffs in addition to the massive voluntary redundancy programme in which 114 Allens Arthur Robinson employees apparently left the firm!

It didn’t come as a huge surprise that Fogarty first demanded we reveal our identities, before launching into a homily that the Firm Spy is cowardly for hiding behind the shield of anonymity, and then finally refused to even consider our request for comment. We invited Chris to send us his thoughts via email and promised to publish them, but we haven’t heard anything yet.

On the weekend, we received the following comments from an anonymous spy:

I wonder if AAR would care to confirm the rumours that firm management told staff last week that they are currently carrying 100 too many lawyers…does this mean that despite “double digit” growth another round of redundancies is likely?????

Good question! Last financial year AAR boasted 3.8% growth in revenue, which apparently translated to double digit growth in partner profits. For the mathematically challenged, this means that if a fictitious partner earned $1,500,000.00 in 2008, they would receive $1,650,000.00 as a minimum in 2009 (10% growth).

Count the zeros! That’s a mother lode of cash … in the middle of the worst financial crisis in history!

Hardly the sort of financial woes that would justify a second wave of redundancies, we would have thought. And yet, like the anonymous source quoted above, we have heard similar rumours from other AAR spies in recent days. We invite Chris and the partnership to confirm these rumours.

If true, is it time Allens staff considered striking? Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

[ED: since publication we have been helpfully informed that Mr Fogarty is not a partner of AAR, but a spokesman for the firm.]

The Firm Spy is working hard to improve the quality and the quantity of its Investment Bank gossip.

To this end, we welcomed the following anonymous tip received on the weekend:

Macquarie Capital has just done a round of redundancies for this years graduates after the six month probabtion cut-off. One team cut their entire graduate intake for 2009.

This rumoured summary redundancy of graduates is a particularly harsh form of treatment in the prevailing GFC environment where investment bank jobs are scarce. If the above rumour is true, prospective Macquarie graduates should consider whether job security counts for more than the appearance of Macquarie Bank on the CV.

We wish the purportedly redundant grads the best of luck in finding new jobs.

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

Thanks to the ex-Deacons spy who gave us the following email. The Firm Spy wishes you the very best of luck reintegrating into the workforce.

I was one of the numerous staff that were made redundant by Deacons at the end of November 2008. I was employed as an IT Trainer in Deacons’ Sydney office for nearly two years until I was informed by the Director of Business Information Systems (Phil Scorgie) that:

“Deacons has recently undertaken a review of its resourcing requirements. Relevantly, this review has

determined that certain Deacons’ current support resources exceed the firm’s requirements and that a rebalancing of support resources and fee earner requirements is necessary. The firm gave close consideration to ways of achieving this rebalancing without reducing headcount. Unfortunately, however, to achieve the necessary rebalancing there needed to be a decrease in the number of certain categories of employees.”

I have since discovered from a current Deacons employee that within two months of my departure, a new IT Trainer was employed to directly replace me. I think it is abhorrent and perhaps even unlawful that firms are able to cut ‘unwanted’ staff using the spectre of a recession to avoid legal repercussions. Clearly even in these tough economic times my role was required. It is vitally important that others are made aware of Deacons’ modus operandi before they make the big mistake of signing an employment contract.

[Name and Contact Details Withheld]

The Firm Spy expresses no opinion as to the veracity of the above email but does, as always, invite further comments and clarification from Deacons. As to the lawfulness of this redundancy (if true), we suggest that the ex-Deacons spy read here.

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In response to our report last week that Mallesons Sorcerer Partner Robert Milliner is apparently thrusting

objectionably low voluntary redundancy packages under the noses of anxious staff, we received the following comments from an anonymous source:

Better than DLA Phillips Fox. They pay less than 2 weeks per year of service plus notice.

Does this mean that DLA Phillips Fox also has a voluntary redundancy scheme in place? If it does, this is the first we have heard of it! More likely is that these terms (if true) are part of either wave one or wave two of the involuntary redundancies announced by DLA Phillips Fox over the last few months.

More to the point, what are the redundancy packages that are being offered at your firm? Please take the time to send us details, anonymously if you so choose.

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

Mallesons Stephen Jaques is reported to have yesterday announced a voluntary redundancy scheme open to all employees. The firm apparently hopes to shed an incredible 5% of staff with the scheme.

More interesting however, is the apparent ascension of Mallesons Chief Executive Partner Robert Milliner to the throne of Australia’s leading economist. In commenting on the announced scheme, Milliner stated matter-of-factly:

The work today is not evenly spread over all practice areas and centres and the economic outlook, despite contradictory reports, is set to remain subdued with flatter conditions in the legal market.

Those ‘contradictory reports’ are presumably the comments yesterday of Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens, whose speech was regarded as being so positive, that commentators considered it the cause of a major lift in domestic markets.

But forget the RBA, Robert Milliner can see the future! A modern-day Gandalf-the-Grey, if you will.

Note to Robert: do not open a wizardry practice in Africa.

Will the Firm Spy receive rumours of involuntariness of in the Mallesons ‘voluntary’ redundancy scheme? Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

It emerged earlier in the week that hard-up Latvians, unable to procure a traditional bank loan, can now pledge their soul as security for a revolutionary loan scheme pioneered by the Kontora Loan Company:

Clients have to sign a contract, with the words “Agreement” in bold letters at the top. The client agrees to the collateral, “that is, my immortal soul”.

pay us, or Barry gets the soul

In other news, we have received several reports now about as-yet unreported redundancies at top-tier national law firm Clayton Utz. This from an anonymous Clutz spy:

Clayton Utz  boasts so much that it tries to support & develop staff so I don’t understand why it would just cut stuff loose. Rumours are rife about more cuts at CU & all the grads are quite worried as there isn’t much work around & back in Feb/March they cut at least 5 grads that I know of, denied 1 grad a LOA so they left (they probably don’t include that figure), and keep changing the commencement date for the next intake of grads. Can FirmSpy pls see what info they can come up with?

Well, in terms of what we ‘can come up with’, we have since had two separate anonymous sources offer surprisingly similar claims to that in the above email. These sources allege that more than one graduate was made redundant at the conclusion of their graduate year and several more were given fixed-term contracts, rather than permanent employment.

If true, these measures would amount to a stunning reversal of form from the firm that heartily said of the GFC as recently as December 2008:

‘It is a very unique environment but even out of periods of difficulty, opportunities arise and you have to be out there, nimble, looking for these opportunities.’

You’ll recall that in the intervening period, Clayton Utz has instituted a pay freeze and also asked some workers to take an involuntary leave of absence. No word yet on whether the allegedly redundant graduates have had to sell their soul.  Or did they already do that when they walked in the door?

Have you got a soul to squeeze? Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

The orignial MILF, Mrs Robinson was the lead character in The Graduate:

a film that enshrined her for all time as the Sexy Older Woman… the seducer of a generation.

While we wouldn’t care to sully her cinematic legacy, or the associated chart-topping song, it seems that a real life Robinson is apparently seducing audiences even today, though in different ways. So here’s to you, Allens Arthur Robinson!

We have previously reported, on three separate occasions, rumours contradicting the firm-line that the recent Allens Arthur Robinson redundancies were 100% voluntary.

We received the following anonymous comments further contradicting the firm-line from an AAR spy earlier in the week:

The firm has a project running called ‘project overflow’ which involves the thinning out of the ranks, outsourcing roles that are not need [sic] and accessing external pools. This spie [sic] hears that the partners are only concerned with who will get their lunch and coffee now!

Again, the Firm Spy cannot confirm these allegations, but there is at least one precedent for a Robinson who has ‘mixed seductive a potion’. Are you seduced?

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We received two emails last week from Allens spies who insisted that some of the 114 people populating The List (voluntary redundancies) emailed by Michael Rose around the firm on Thursday were in fact given a bit of a nudge. Allens partner Chris Fogarty, the same guy who inadvertently revealed the bizarre nature of Allens’ graduate advertising, offered the following response to our report:

No one was tapped on the shoulder and asked to go, Mr Fogarty said, and the program, launched in April, was “100 per cent voluntary”. “I think it’s pretty insulting to the people who have taken redundancy,” Mr Fogarty said of suggestions — published anonymously on a website — that some staff had been pushed to leave the firm.

On the same day of the above report, we received the following comments from an AAR spy:

those rumours are totally correct..at performance review a number of people have been told they are “better off” applying for voluntary redundancy. I have also heard that the firm has put law grads on a one year “contract” as well as given most people a worse performance review this year (thus no bonus)

Who do you believe?  Three anonymous AAR spies, or a member of a partnership which has instigated a pay freeze, cancelled the Christmas party and, as reported in AFR (3/7), enjoyed … ahem … DOUBLE DIGIT GROWTH in profits?  Send the Firm Spy your news and views!