It emerged this week that Clayton Utz lost 13.4% of its staff over the last year - and that's despite not having a formal redundancy programme.
All major firms lost professional staff over the last year but mostly through planned redundancies, according to AFR and Firmspy stats. Blakes was down 7.4%, Allens 11.4% and Mallesons a whopping 21.2%. So how come Clutz is up there when it officially didn't kick anyone out? There are dark mutterings internally of lawyers being "managed out" on the sly. But the firm insists that all the staff exited through "suspicious dataroom accidents natural attrition". And clearly the A&O defection had an impact - 14 partners plus a number of other staff accounts for a decent chunk of that 13.4%.
Elsewhere there was more positive news, with real growth in legal jobs since January this year. A recent report in the Australian revealed that across the top 35 firms the net increase was 76 positions. Minters has boosted its numbers by 85 since June last year. And Corrs isn't too far behind with 49 since January. Time will tell whether extra staff equates to extra profits...
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All major firms lost professional staff over the last year but mostly through planned redundancies, according to AFR and Firmspy stats. Blakes was down 7.4%, Allens 11.4% and Mallesons a whopping 21.2%. So how come Clutz is up there when it officially didn't kick anyone out? There are dark mutterings internally of lawyers being "managed out" on the sly. But the firm insists that all the staff exited through "
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Natural attrition, Clayton Utz-style. |
Elsewhere there was more positive news, with real growth in legal jobs since January this year. A recent report in the Australian revealed that across the top 35 firms the net increase was 76 positions. Minters has boosted its numbers by 85 since June last year. And Corrs isn't too far behind with 49 since January. Time will tell whether extra staff equates to extra profits...