Latest news with #HerbertSmithFreehills
The Age
22-06-2025
- Business
- The Age
Working from home – with Big Brother watching
Five years after the pandemic spread over the world, it's not clear if the employee or the employer is the winner from the prevalence of working from home. Screen-bound employees working remotely can avoid the time and expense of commuting, and companies can hire staff without the expense of paying for office space, but employees are also isolated, often disconnected, and occasionally tempted to wag during work hours. History suggests pandemics empower workers. In the Middle Ages, the Black Death shrunk the labour pool in Europe, giving the working class an awareness of its bargaining power. Today, however, technology may reverse the power balance. Digital tools used by employees working remotely are a source of endless information on their own activities. And it's information employers can track – often without an employee's awareness. The post-COVID office arrangement has left some companies snooping on their staff's productivity out-of-office. A 2021 global poll of 375 senior leaders found that in Australia, 91 per cent of respondents said they used monitoring software to keep tabs on employees working remotely. The poll commissioned by the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills found only 5 per cent of business leaders instead required employees to self-report. The reason employees can work from home – the laptop, the internet, mobile phones, Teams meetings – is also why they are so easily watched. Keyboard strokes, time in front of the computer, mouse movements, eye movements, and now, with the help of AI, even the tone of messages sent can be monitored. Kira Bomberg, marketing director for Mimecast Australia, said that before the pandemic lockdowns, her cybersecurity company looked for unusual email activity out of hours. This could be a potential sign of unauthorised access of information. Loading Three years since lockdowns ended, people have switched to hybrid work and their hours are adjusting, so looking for 'time-based' inconsistencies alone no longer captures cybersecurity risk, Bomberg says. Still, the company scans 98 million emails a day in Australia and New Zealand, and a full 1.1 billion a day globally. 'COVID saw the use of collaborative tools across businesses, the rise of Teams, Zoom, Slack,' she said. Those tools involve sharing documents and links, often with people outside the business. 'So the industry had to catch up with security on collaborative tools.' The company homes in on behavioural activities, looking for intruders who have harvested credentials, which is a very common activity. But the company also looks for 'disgruntled employee insiders'. The systems track movements of employee data and then, using a risk-scoring model looking for 'insider risk indicators', flag the employee's action for attention with the employer. Mimecast's Incydr product 'continuously' collects metadata as events are detected, the company's video says. 'Using artificial intelligence, we look for anomalies in speech patterns' of employees, Bomberg says. 'We ask: would a certain employee use this kind of language? Would he send questions to the finance team? Are these his normal greetings?' The monitoring means that every employee is subject to 24-seven surveillance – in their office and also, increasingly in the post-COVID era, in their home office, if they have one. Relying on AI to sift content can create 'false positives', Bomberg says – situations, events, exchanges are flagged as being suspicious when they are just outside normal patterns. Mimecast APAC field chief technology officer Ryan Economos says false positives aren't 'the most frequent result' and don't happen often. The company's 'focus is on identifying all forms of insider risk from employees, with the knowledge that most incidents are more often unintentional rather than stemming from disgruntled individuals', he says. While Mimecast is a human 'risk management platform' designed to provide cybersecurity, performance software does exist. In a separate, widely publicised case, Suzie Cheikho was fired from IAG insurance in February 2023 after 'the company's keystroke monitoring software detected low levels of activity while she was working remotely'. Draconian response A world of remote work has placed employers in a fog, which some have met with a Draconian response. In March, about 2000 staff at wealth management giant AMP were told to sign contracts that the finance union alleged would enable the company to carry out continuous video surveillance of them. After coming under fire for the clause, AMP eventually backtracked. In two cases that predate the pandemic, Sydney-based veteran IT executive Peter Croft says he discovered that a full-time tech employee was working a second job. 'They were doing the same job as the job they were doing for my company, in breach of their employment contract.' One employee's output was patchy, and the other simply spoke 'openly' about having a second job – to the point where the employee discussed needing to schedule meetings around it. The situation became unacceptable, he said. 'Funnily enough, they were quite willing to be very open about it.' Croft, however, says he doesn't see employees secretly holding two jobs as a 'huge trend'. Yet the reality of hybrid work further enables such HR capers. One WA-based IT consultant related a story on Reddit that occurred at a small start-up: 'We literally had a client escalate a case to us ... where an employee joined a company all-hands meeting from her company Teams account, on her company-provided laptop, with her camera background set to the corporate branding of what turned out to be her new employer, who was a major competitor, and she was yet to even provide notice.' The legality and acceptance of employer surveillance of employees working from home is a matter of debate. Loading There is generally more public acceptance of monitoring of people in transportation, construction roles or jobs that could physically endanger people, says University of Technology Sydney labour lawyer and academic Dr Joellen Riley Munton. For that reason, the law generally accepts the employer monitoring of employees, but with limits. In NSW, workplace surveillance legislation basically 'says the employer just needs to notify people that it is, in fact, watching them and how it's watching them, and then it can do so', Munton says. Employers have always monitored employees People forget that employers have always monitored employees, she says, looking back at the industrial era, when workers toiled in factories under the gaze of bosses. 'They've always harnessed our energies, and they've controlled our time. To some extent, we've become freer of that level of monitoring by being able to earn an income without necessarily fronting up at the factory and being strapped to machines. 'But by the same token the understandable desire of employers to want to make sure you're actually earning your salary means that they're introducing surveillance means. And some of those surveillance means are more intrusive than they would have once been.' The question is: just how intrusive, especially when phones, apps and gadgets produce endless streams of information to audit. Employee data can be mined and analysed on an anonymised basis, which is the business model for US-based Worklytics. The company says it does not provide employee-level monitoring services to clients, but instead tracks 'hundreds of real-time metrics' from Slack, Office 365 and Google workplace 'across meetings, emails, online interactions, document management and more'. This data, compiled and presented by the company, allows clients to understand manager effectiveness, wellbeing and burnout and sales effectiveness. Worklytics has no clients in Australia. Disconnect in expectations As working from home moves from a contingency plan to a way of life, companies are adjusting to the new reality. There appears to be a disconnect in expectations, even within companies. One social media poster said he received a 'work-from-the-office-or-else' email from management while working in an empty office. The manager who sent the email 'was himself working from home'. Distance allows more misunderstandings, too. In another case, an employee misinterpreted their manager's announcement of working from home as authorisation for them to also work remotely. By many indications, hybrid work (some in office, some from home) is here to stay. A recent report from the Australian HR Institute shows 'return to office' requirements are declining. The same polling found the top disadvantage of hybrid working was 'a feeling of disconnection between colleagues'. Loading In the hybrid arrangement, employees can fall through the cracks of management visibility, leaving them feeling disconnected. The already-unclear boundaries of employee surveillance are poised to become even blurrier as work and personal time blend. Writing in The Conversation, RMIT lecturer Melissa Wheeler describes a paradox between surveillance and performance. 'When surveillance is enforced, employers have greater control over the work that can be accomplished by employees. But it can also signal a lack of trust,' she said. 'By definition, seizing greater control is incompatible with communicating trust.' With so many employees working at distance, fostering and maintaining a level of trust is essential, she says. But trust, as well as commitment, may be in short supply as remote working becomes standard. Croft, the veteran executive, says that 'one of the byproducts of larger scale work from home is to prove the use-case that if things can be performed outside the office, they can be performed from anywhere'. There is no longer any 'real practical difference' between working from the suburbs of Sydney or working from the Philippines, Croft said. 'Potentially you're going to be competing with people who are based in some other part of the world for a role,' he said. 'I think everybody's aware of that.'
Sydney Morning Herald
22-06-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
Working from home – with Big Brother watching
Five years after the pandemic spread over the world, it's not clear if the employee or the employer is the winner from the prevalence of working from home. Screen-bound employees working remotely can avoid the time and expense of commuting, and companies can hire staff without the expense of paying for office space, but employees are also isolated, often disconnected, and occasionally tempted to wag during work hours. History suggests pandemics empower workers. In the Middle Ages, the Black Death shrunk the labour pool in Europe, giving the working class an awareness of its bargaining power. Today, however, technology may reverse the power balance. Digital tools used by employees working remotely are a source of endless information on their own activities. And it's information employers can track – often without an employee's awareness. The post-COVID office arrangement has left some companies snooping on their staff's productivity out-of-office. A 2021 global poll of 375 senior leaders found that in Australia, 91 per cent of respondents said they used monitoring software to keep tabs on employees working remotely. The poll commissioned by the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills found only 5 per cent of business leaders instead required employees to self-report. The reason employees can work from home – the laptop, the internet, mobile phones, Teams meetings – is also why they are so easily watched. Keyboard strokes, time in front of the computer, mouse movements, eye movements, and now, with the help of AI, even the tone of messages sent can be monitored. Kira Bomberg, marketing director for Mimecast Australia, said that before the pandemic lockdowns, her cybersecurity company looked for unusual email activity out of hours. This could be a potential sign of unauthorised access of information. Loading Three years since lockdowns ended, people have switched to hybrid work and their hours are adjusting, so looking for 'time-based' inconsistencies alone no longer captures cybersecurity risk, Bomberg says. Still, the company scans 98 million emails a day in Australia and New Zealand, and a full 1.1 billion a day globally. 'COVID saw the use of collaborative tools across businesses, the rise of Teams, Zoom, Slack,' she said. Those tools involve sharing documents and links, often with people outside the business. 'So the industry had to catch up with security on collaborative tools.' The company homes in on behavioural activities, looking for intruders who have harvested credentials, which is a very common activity. But the company also looks for 'disgruntled employee insiders'. The systems track movements of employee data and then, using a risk-scoring model looking for 'insider risk indicators', flag the employee's action for attention with the employer. Mimecast's Incydr product 'continuously' collects metadata as events are detected, the company's video says. 'Using artificial intelligence, we look for anomalies in speech patterns' of employees, Bomberg says. 'We ask: would a certain employee use this kind of language? Would he send questions to the finance team? Are these his normal greetings?' The monitoring means that every employee is subject to 24-seven surveillance – in their office and also, increasingly in the post-COVID era, in their home office, if they have one. Relying on AI to sift content can create 'false positives', Bomberg says – situations, events, exchanges are flagged as being suspicious when they are just outside normal patterns. Mimecast APAC field chief technology officer Ryan Economos says false positives aren't 'the most frequent result' and don't happen often. The company's 'focus is on identifying all forms of insider risk from employees, with the knowledge that most incidents are more often unintentional rather than stemming from disgruntled individuals', he says. While Mimecast is a human 'risk management platform' designed to provide cybersecurity, performance software does exist. In a separate, widely publicised case, Suzie Cheikho was fired from IAG insurance in February 2023 after 'the company's keystroke monitoring software detected low levels of activity while she was working remotely'. Draconian response A world of remote work has placed employers in a fog, which some have met with a Draconian response. In March, about 2000 staff at wealth management giant AMP were told to sign contracts that the finance union alleged would enable the company to carry out continuous video surveillance of them. After coming under fire for the clause, AMP eventually backtracked. In two cases that predate the pandemic, Sydney-based veteran IT executive Peter Croft says he discovered that a full-time tech employee was working a second job. 'They were doing the same job as the job they were doing for my company, in breach of their employment contract.' One employee's output was patchy, and the other simply spoke 'openly' about having a second job – to the point where the employee discussed needing to schedule meetings around it. The situation became unacceptable, he said. 'Funnily enough, they were quite willing to be very open about it.' Croft, however, says he doesn't see employees secretly holding two jobs as a 'huge trend'. Yet the reality of hybrid work further enables such HR capers. One WA-based IT consultant related a story on Reddit that occurred at a small start-up: 'We literally had a client escalate a case to us ... where an employee joined a company all-hands meeting from her company Teams account, on her company-provided laptop, with her camera background set to the corporate branding of what turned out to be her new employer, who was a major competitor, and she was yet to even provide notice.' The legality and acceptance of employer surveillance of employees working from home is a matter of debate. Loading There is generally more public acceptance of monitoring of people in transportation, construction roles or jobs that could physically endanger people, says University of Technology Sydney labour lawyer and academic Dr Joellen Riley Munton. For that reason, the law generally accepts the employer monitoring of employees, but with limits. In NSW, workplace surveillance legislation basically 'says the employer just needs to notify people that it is, in fact, watching them and how it's watching them, and then it can do so', Munton says. Employers have always monitored employees People forget that employers have always monitored employees, she says, looking back at the industrial era, when workers toiled in factories under the gaze of bosses. 'They've always harnessed our energies, and they've controlled our time. To some extent, we've become freer of that level of monitoring by being able to earn an income without necessarily fronting up at the factory and being strapped to machines. 'But by the same token the understandable desire of employers to want to make sure you're actually earning your salary means that they're introducing surveillance means. And some of those surveillance means are more intrusive than they would have once been.' The question is: just how intrusive, especially when phones, apps and gadgets produce endless streams of information to audit. Employee data can be mined and analysed on an anonymised basis, which is the business model for US-based Worklytics. The company says it does not provide employee-level monitoring services to clients, but instead tracks 'hundreds of real-time metrics' from Slack, Office 365 and Google workplace 'across meetings, emails, online interactions, document management and more'. This data, compiled and presented by the company, allows clients to understand manager effectiveness, wellbeing and burnout and sales effectiveness. Worklytics has no clients in Australia. Disconnect in expectations As working from home moves from a contingency plan to a way of life, companies are adjusting to the new reality. There appears to be a disconnect in expectations, even within companies. One social media poster said he received a 'work-from-the-office-or-else' email from management while working in an empty office. The manager who sent the email 'was himself working from home'. Distance allows more misunderstandings, too. In another case, an employee misinterpreted their manager's announcement of working from home as authorisation for them to also work remotely. By many indications, hybrid work (some in office, some from home) is here to stay. A recent report from the Australian HR Institute shows 'return to office' requirements are declining. The same polling found the top disadvantage of hybrid working was 'a feeling of disconnection between colleagues'. Loading In the hybrid arrangement, employees can fall through the cracks of management visibility, leaving them feeling disconnected. The already-unclear boundaries of employee surveillance are poised to become even blurrier as work and personal time blend. Writing in The Conversation, RMIT lecturer Melissa Wheeler describes a paradox between surveillance and performance. 'When surveillance is enforced, employers have greater control over the work that can be accomplished by employees. But it can also signal a lack of trust,' she said. 'By definition, seizing greater control is incompatible with communicating trust.' With so many employees working at distance, fostering and maintaining a level of trust is essential, she says. But trust, as well as commitment, may be in short supply as remote working becomes standard. Croft, the veteran executive, says that 'one of the byproducts of larger scale work from home is to prove the use-case that if things can be performed outside the office, they can be performed from anywhere'. There is no longer any 'real practical difference' between working from the suburbs of Sydney or working from the Philippines, Croft said. 'Potentially you're going to be competing with people who are based in some other part of the world for a role,' he said. 'I think everybody's aware of that.'
AU Financial Review
04-06-2025
- Business
- AU Financial Review
Freehills' M&A rainmaker lands at Ashurst in law firm shake-up
Tony Damian says he hopes a personal following among clients will translate into new business for Ashurst, the top-tier firm that lured the mergers and acquisitions rainmaker from its rival last year. While The Australian Financial Review 's Street Talk column reported the move in December, Ashurst announced the appointment of Damian to staff on Wednesday. The recruitment of a high-powered partner from Herbert Smith Freehills was a major coup for Ashurst and part of a plan to build the firm's high-end corporate capabilities and jettison less profitable work.
Reuters
02-06-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Herbert Smith Freehills and Kramer Levin launch latest transatlantic merger
June 2 (Reuters) - Herbert Smith Freehills and Kramer Levin have finalized the latest major legal industry merger of recent years, combining to form a 2,700-lawyer firm with over $2 billion in revenue. The merger took effect on Sunday following a partnership vote in April, creating what they have described as a top 20 firm globally under the name Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer. The combination of New York-founded Kramer Levin and Herbert Smith Freehills, a larger firm with UK and Australian roots, continues a move toward consolidation in the industry as law firms seek scale to compete across major markets and practice areas. Justin D'Agostino, global CEO of the combined firm, said in an interview on Monday that HSF Kramer wants to expand its U.S. work in practice areas such as private equity and litigation, arbitration and white-collar crime. "We're coming in with a very clear investment plan, a very clear growth plan for the United States and internationally," said D'Agostino, a longtime Herbert Smith Freehills lawyer who splits time between London and Hong Kong. The firm is also eyeing a possible expansion into Texas to support its energy sector work, he said. In a similar transaction last year, London-founded Allen & Overy combined with New York's Shearman & Sterling to create A&O Shearman, with nearly 4,000 lawyers. New York firm Schulte, Roth & Zabel is currently in deal talks with larger Chicago-founded firm McDermott, Will & Emery. The firms said in early May that they are "actively finalizing" a merger that is expected to become official in the coming months. The consolidation is driven partly by the idea that greater size and profitability gives firms a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining lawyers from a limited talent pool, said law firm consultant Kent Zimmermann of Zeughauser Group. The departure of one or two key partners at a smaller and less profitable firm "can shake the confidence of the rest of the partnership more easily than when there's regrettable departures in firms with a much deeper bench of quality,' he said. Law firm merger activity stayed relatively steady for the first quarter of 2025, with 22 completed deals compared to 21 during that period in 2024, according to consultancy Fairfax Associates. Lisa Smith of Fairfax said there has been an uptick in cross-border mergers compared to a decade ago. There are 'more conversations and more serious conversations' about such deals, she said. Still, consultants said there remains only a small pool of UK-U.S. tie-ups that may ultimately make sense for some firms due to factors like gaps in profitability, cultural differences and client conflicts. There have been several transatlantic deals in recent years, some of which have been more successful than others, said Tony Williams of UK legal management consultancy Jomati Consultants. Other London-founded firms like Freshfields, Clifford Chance and Linklaters have instead grown significantly in the United States by hiring from competitors in major U.S. cities. Consultants said some of the firms that have grown through hires may be watching for the right opportunity. "There's been no secret that a range of UK firms would be interested in an appropriate merger with a U.S. firm," Williams said.
Associated Press
02-06-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Officially Launches
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 2, 2025-- Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer is delighted to announce the successful completion of the combination between Herbert Smith Freehills and Kramer Levin on June 1, 2025. This transformative combination creates an integrated global legal powerhouse of some 2,700 lawyers, including around 630 partners, across 26 offices. With over US$2 billion in revenues, positioning it among the world's top law firms, HSF Kramer has established a robust global platform for future investment and expansion. Rebecca Maslen-Stannage, Chair and Senior Partner of Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, commented: 'Today we embark on an exciting new chapter. Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer unites two firms with complementary strengths, shared values, and a bold vision for the future. We are delighted by the overwhelmingly positive feedback from our clients and our people. Together, we will focus on our strategic vision and build on this fantastic platform.' HSF Kramer's extensive footprint and global reach offer immediate synergies in areas such as private equity, bankruptcy, disputes, real estate, and securitization, providing clients with unparalleled support on complex transactions and high-stakes disputes. Justin D'Agostino, Global CEO of Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, commented: 'In today's fast-evolving and uncertain macroeconomic landscape, clients need a truly global law firm with deep local insight across all their key markets. Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer is uniquely positioned to deliver exceptional outcomes in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.' The firm will have a strong focus on growth and investments, particularly in all these key practice areas as well as a broader transactional offering, on enhancing its New York presence, and on building its regulatory and technology practices centered around its Washington DC and Silicon Valley offices. Paul Schoeman and Howard Spilko, Co-Managing Partners of Kramer Levin prior to the combination commented: 'We look forward to the strategic investments we will be making as a result of the combination to grow our destination practices in the U.S. and enhance the service we provide to clients here and throughout the world.' Paul Schoeman will serve as the Executive Partner of the U.S. region, and Howard Spilko will serve as Global Head of Private Equity and Chair of Corporate, US, as well as serve on the Global Council for HSF Kramer. Justin D'Agostino leads the firm's Global Executive and is joined by Executive Partners Kristin Stammer (Asia & Australia), Jeremy Walden (UK & EMEA), Paul Schoeman (US), Alison Brown (US Growth & Strategic Integration) and Anna Sutherland (Practices). About Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer (HSF Kramer) was formed in June 2025 through the transformational combination of Herbert Smith Freehills and Kramer Levin, creating a world-leading global law firm. With over 6,000 people including c.2,700 lawyers and spanning 26 offices, HSF Kramer provides comprehensive legal services across every major region of the world. Uniquely positioned to help clients achieve ambitious objectives, HSF Kramer delivers exceptional results in complex transactions and high-stakes disputes. For more information visit LinkedIn: View source version on CONTACT: Media contact:Jennifer Manton Tel: +1 212 715 7612 Email:[email protected] Pochna Tel: +1 212 843 8007 Email:[email protected] KEYWORD: NEW YORK UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: CONSULTING PROFESSIONAL SERVICES LEGAL SOURCE: Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Copyright Business Wire 2025. PUB: 06/02/2025 10:46 AM/DISC: 06/02/2025 10:45 AM
