EXCLUSIVE Legal 500 and Chambers guide accused of furlough sharp practice

The owners of Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners have both been accused of taking advantage of the UK's furloughing scheme with questionable justification.

Legalease, the publisher of Legal 500 and Legal Business, is understood to have informed sales staff earlier this month that sales had increased in the first week of April by £80,000 to over £300,000 for the week. David Goulthorpe, Legalease's Managing Director, told sales staff in an email that “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”, and that it had been “an excellent week”.

But it had been “a difficult week in other ways”, he pivoted, because despite the cracking revenues, 50 staff had been furloughed including 12 of the sales team. Legal Business has been shuttered.

However he still encouraged the much-reduced sales team to make the following week "even better", asking them to earn "£400k this week? How about £500k? Who's up for the challenge?"

In case making more money with fewer people wasn't sufficiently challenging to motivate them, they were also told to assist in chasing bad debts.

"We're working harder than ever", said a source. RollOnFriday asked Legalease if it was in the spirit of furloughing to can staff while using the remaining employees to cover for their absence, and pull extra duties, but it did not respond.

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Chambers and Partners is understood to have furloughed staff and asked others to consider unpaid sabbaticals, or reductions in hours with corresponding reductions in pay. "It's been suggested that these schemes may become less voluntary if uptake isn't high enough", said a source.

Sources said that on an all company call last Monday, the CEO characterised the measures as being necessary due to a reduction in work. "That doesn't chime with the experience of most of those it's happening to", said an insider. "It seems like a cash grab, pure and simple”.

Sidestepping the ethics question, Chambers and Partners told RollOnFriday it “remains in a strong position” and would “continue with many of our launches as scheduled”, although it had "decided to pause some research and provide extensions for our largest guides". It said it would top up furloughed employees' salaries to 100%.

Comments

I see a window of opportunity to finally put an end to this whole directories' circus. They are only in it for the money - little to none added value.

The directories are a waste of time. In my sector a review of the directory entries highlights Band 1 and/or eminent practitioners who haven’t done a decent deal in the last five years yet get top ranking and obsequious plaudits for the cutting edge skills and experience! Thankfully the in house team that I work in understands the market so we are alive to the risks associated with relying solely on the directories. What in house counsel would use the directories exclusively to source legal services?

No one reads the directories other than the lawyers who are in them anyway and are insecure enough to want an ego boost.

"It's been suggested that these schemes may become less voluntary if uptake isn't high enough", said a source. - except that it hasn't. That is just a blatant lie. It also seems a bit contradictory to say that on the one hand Chambers is abusing furlough when it doesn't need to yet is also so desperate for money that it's threatening staff with forced sabbaticals.

Are we still buying rankings in directories?

How 90s.

The scheme does say

"If you cannot maintain your current workforce because your operations have been severely affected by coronavirus (COVID-19), you can furlough employees and apply for a grant that covers 80% of their usual monthly wage costs, up to £2,500 a month, plus the associated Employer National Insurance contributions and pension contributions (up to the level of the minimum automatic enrolment employer pension contribution) on that subsidised furlough pay."

So I hope HMRC looks into every single business for evidence they have been "severely affected by CV" - otherwise even producers of covid 19 masks with 10x the profits of before may be joining the bandwagon of free money for those staff no one likes at work and now is their chance to make those ones sit at home.

Agree with comments above. Legal directories are in their most part a totally self-serving platform largely funded by the very lawyers who appear in them, and quote from them.

If any intelligent Client wanted to instruct a lawyer, the last thing they'd probably do was visit some online legal directory and search for "Band 1" in category [insert mind numbingly boring description here].

The bosses who run these directories are mostly to blame for debasing the profession to the point where management in law firms are more concerned about what Band their department falls into, rather than the well-being of their own employees.

In no other profession do you have your professional output graded by a bunch of grads going on gossip from the few people who will take their call, or indeed marketing departments slavishly slogging to change the (usually arbitrary) number. Fingers crossed the market wises up soon.

Didn't realise there were useful directories. Thought you just had some comics

Anything to hasten the demise of the LinkedIn "Honoured to be listed among the top 40 personal injury practitioners on the south end of Colchester High Street" posts...