The horror, the horror: the Freshfields pay freeze

February 10, 2009

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Remarkable news from Alex Spence of The Times, who reports that Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer yesterday informed staff that their pay would be frozen at current levels until 2010, while salaries for newly qualified solicitors would be cut from £66,000 to £59,000.

Freshfields is an institution among the UK’s City law firms. It’s assuredly Magic Circle and decidedly venerable. Its bold move comes in the wake of staff cuts by Clifford Chance, Linklaters and Lovells.

Spence reports that Tim Jones, Freshfields’ London managing partner, regards the move as key to a cost-cutting drive that also includes reducing expenditure on travel and conferences, though not, as yet, the shedding of staff. As Jones puts it, it’s “an appropriate and proportionate response to the world we now find ourselves in”. Scott Gibson, a director of Hughes-Castell, the recruitment agency, opines that the pay freeze is understandable but surprising: “It’s a brave move to be the first firm to announce this. It shows how serious this market is.”

No doubt Gibson and other recruitment agencies will also soon be looking at reduced commission fees – if they’re not already. Meanwhile, Freshfields’ decision is a sound one, if also dismaying for those at the outset of their legal careers.

Pictured courtesy of Symic: two young lawyers contemplate salary levels for the foreseeable future.

 

One Response to “The horror, the horror: the Freshfields pay freeze”

Posted by:
AndrewBoldman on June 4, 2009 at 2:10 pm

da best. Keep it going! Thank you

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Good work by Rusbridger

February 10, 2012
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The headline says it all: ‘Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger takes pay cut‘.

Dan Sabbagh’s piece says a bit more: said editor ‘emailed staff at the newspaper to say that his salary in the upcoming 2012-13 financial year will be £395,010, compared with £438,900 in the current financial year’.

Some voices say: ‘How worthy.’

Others opine: ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’

But we say: good work by Mr Rusbridger. For the sake of the media’s survival, we hope that others in senior positions in the industry will follow suit.

Image of toolkit allegedly deployed by Alan Rusbridger courtesy of Flickr user LollyKnit.

From the inside of the maze, ethically outwards

February 9, 2012

Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.

Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?

Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.

But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?

We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.

What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.

Supreme Court on Twitter

February 6, 2012

Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?

We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.