Endless Articles About The State Of Australian Big Law

Article from: The Australian
THE economic downturn has delivered a major blow to the career prospects of many lawyers as leading firms have slashed partner intakes by more than 50 per cent.

The leading firms have appointed just 118 new partners in the past six months compared with 232 for the same period last year, The Australian’s partnership survey shows.

Half of the 32 firms covered by the survey included no women in their intake, triggering criticism from sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick.

"We have an appalling leakage of female talent in the law that has a significant cost to the industry and to the Australian economy," Ms Broderick said.

"It is clear that market forces are not going to fix the problem of a lack of females at the top of law firms," she said.

The survey has also revealed that job losses — through redundancies and natural attrition — have affected almost half of the 32 firms covered by the survey.

Since December, a total of 224 legal jobs have disappeared at 14 of the firms.

Article from: The Australian
AT a time when half the leading law firms are shedding jobs, there is no excuse for the snail-like pace with which the Tax Office has been dealing with the concerns of the legal profession.

The federal government has been spending large amounts of taxpayers’ money to save jobs, yet the Tax Office has declined to make a simple administrative change that could help the legal services industry.

At a time when jobs are in peril, this inability to make a decision cannot be allowed to continue.

For at least 18 months, peak organisations within the profession have been pleading with the Tax Office to remove a regulatory impediment that prevents big firms from incorporating.

Apart from a lot of talk, nothing has happened. But unless that changes very quickly, the Tax Office will be responsible for limiting the beneficial impact of this week’s deal between Deacons and global firm Norton Rose.

The Norton Rose deal is extremely significant. It is the first time an Australian legal firm has had a real chance of achieving a full financial merger — including profit sharing — with one of the global giants of the profession.

Article from: The Australian
THE continuing fallout of the global financial crisis, combined with legislative change, is expected to lead to a surge in demand for insolvency, employment and litigation lawyers this financial year as confidence returns to the legal market.

A survey of leading recruitment firms conducted by The Australian has revealed the practice areas they believe will be in most demand by private practices and in-house employers in the next 12 months.

All eight recruiters surveyed agree that the high number of corporate collapses and restructures resulting from the financial downturn means insolvency lawyers will be highly sought after.

"Undiscovered bad debts, negative growth overseas, global organisations going into administration and the credit crunch should see a sustained need for insolvency lawyers," Hudson Legal practice manager Stuart Ablethorpe told The Australian.

Senior associate Yvette Adiguzel returned from London six months ago and is now back with Mallesons Stephen Jaques, where she started her career, after experiencing the worst of Britain’s economic downturn.

She was with a US firm’s London office as the downturn hit, scuttling transactions and leaving lawyers idle.

"I kept in touch with people at Mallesons and they didn’t experience the huge reduction in the volume of work that happened in London and the US," she said.

Towards the end, she said the atmosphere in London was "not very pleasant. Lawyers felt the impact and so did the clients".

Now she is back in Sydney, she says she has no trouble billing five to six hours a day, and sometimes even 10. "In London it was a struggle to bill even two hours," Ms Adiguzel said.

 Jun 22 2009, 08:45 PM by Lawyers Weekly

Australian lawyers are leaving the tattered legal markets of the globe to return home. So what does the mass exodus mean for local law firms reeling in the benefits of a buyer’s market – and is there really no place like home? Angela Priestley reports

Families around Australia are silently rejoicing. The adult children of mums and dads are returning home from overseas, and they are not just back home for a short family visit. Australian professionals, particularly lawyers, are escaping the devastated markets of London, New York and other legal hotspots to re-establish their lives in Australia.