Poaching warning as British law firm leads a mass poaching raid on Australian rival Clayton Utz

The mass poaching of 14 senior lawyers by a British law firm entering the Australian market has sparked fears that Australia’s skills shortage could be about to lead to a poaching epidemic, industry experts warn.

British law firm Allen & Overy has sent shockwaves through the local legal fraternity by reportedly poaching 14 partners from Clayton Utz, as the UK giant prepares to open its local Australian office.

Clayton Utz chief executive partner David Fagan has said in a statement the departures are disappointing, but the company will continue to operate normally.

“Partner movements such as this occur in the life cycle of a firm. Clayton Utz is in excellent shape and continues to be one of the strongest performing firms in the market,” he said.

But the move is just one of the latest indicators that companies are beginning to poach employees from other companies, who are now more willing to leave positions they may have held since the global financial crisis began.

Kye McDonald from Skye Recruitment says poaching activity is increasing, but while he has not investigated the Clayton Utz case specifically, it would be unusual for one firm to target another in order to poach a large number of staff.

“This is quite unusual, I think there would be something a little more behind this because to get that sort of level from one separate company is very unusual.”

“Usually what happens is that a company thinks along the lines of, ‘want a person with this background, therefore we will look at these few companies’, which is much more general than targeting Joe Blogs from one company specifically.”

Paul Quinn from recruitment-industry focused firm Quintessential Marketing, says that after a difficult 12 months, the sector booming again.

“Anecdotally I know that for recruiters, some of them have had their best month ever in January and had a good result after an ordinary year last year. Recruitment activity is on the rise, which would also flow through into headhunting and poaching.”

Last month Chandler Macleod executive general manager David Reynolds told SmartCompany he had already heard of workers leaving for greener pastures. He said employees may have stayed in their current roles during the global financial crisis because of high unemployment, and have put up with actions they might not have otherwise such as pay freezes.

Don’t forget to check out this week’s two-part SmartCompany special on building and keeping your team. Today we tackle how to keep your best staff, while on Thursday we look at how to poach someone else’s.