Slater + Gordon law firm staff outrage over email leak of salaries and rankings
Upset staff at Slater + Gordon are comparing salaries after a spreadsheet was sent out in a ‘malicious’ email.
Legal giant Slater + Gordon has been forced to set up a formal process to deal with angry staff who have been able to compare their pay and performance ratings with those of their colleagues, thanks to a “malicious” email the firm suspects was sent by a disgruntled current or former employee.
The top-ranking class action firm has called in police and forensic experts to investigate the origins of the email, purportedly sent by interim chief people officer Mari Ruiz-Matthyssen.
However, Ms Ruiz-Matthyssen on Monday maintained she did not send it and claimed “a cursory examination of the email and its attachment gave a clear indication as to the likely identity of the sender”.
The email, sent on Friday morning and blind-copied to all Slater + Gordon staff, made scathing criticisms of senior staff and revealed the salaries of the firm’s 906 employees.
Slater + Gordon said the email was not sent by Ms Ruiz-Matthyssen and denounced it as a hoax, but has so far been unable to track down the culprit.
On Monday evening Ms Ruiz-Matthyssen released a statement through her lawyers saying she had been wrongfully accused of sending the email “and publicly vilified since that time”.
“The manner in which this matter has been handled over the past four days has caused immeasurable damage and distress to me personally and professionally, as well as to my family.
“I did not send the email. A cursory examination of the email and its attachment gave a clear indication as to the likely identity of the sender. I have engaged lawyers and I am in the process of taking legal action.”
Ms Ruiz-Matthyssen’s lawyers would not give further information about “the likely identity of the sender”.
The Australian understands the most likely scenario emerging from the investigation points to a current or former employee, with the detailed knowledge of the firm and its staff making a hostile external actor highly unlikely.
The author of the email appeared to have inside information about private dinners at the home of chief executive Dina Tutungi, illnesses suffered by staff, rivalries between named individuals, investigations into cases of inappropriate conduct, planned redundancies and even gossip about which board member “they will ditch this year”.
The Australian understands some employees also believe the person who sent the email must have been in attendance at the firm’s launch of its new values last Wednesday.
The email was sent from a gmail account in Ms Ruiz-Matthyssen’s name, but also contained links to her Slater + Gordon email address. Investigators are working to determine if those links were fraudulently added to make it appear she sent information between the two accounts.
A spokesperson told The Australian: “The contents of the email include a range of disparaging remarks about individuals – what is presented as internal information in the email is incorrect and in many ways a work of fiction.”
The company in coming weeks will set up a process by which concerned staff can raise concerns about pay parity, after hundreds of employees opened a spreadsheet attached to the email listing the salaries of everyone in the firm.
Those salaries ranged from Ms Tutungi’s purported $690,000 to a Melbourne legal assistant on $22,916. Almost a third of the staff also discovered their performance ratings – and those of others in their departments – on a scale from a top of five to a low of two.
Only 19 of the 290 whose rankings were revealed scored a five, with most achieving either a four or three. Twenty-eight staff received the lowest score of two.
One former Slaters employee told The Australian: “There’s several people on the same level, but earning considerably less than colleagues, so the leaking of salary information is going to have serious consequences come pay negotiation and bonus time.
“Slater and Gordon has become more about making money from injured clients than getting the best outcomes for injured clients, which is all private equity cares about. But who is going to want to buy the business now, given this mess?”
The biggest concern for the already troubled firm is convincing clients their confidential information is safe. No client data has been compromised in the email scandal.
On its website Slater + Gordon claims cyber security expertise with experience running group proceedings over data privacy breaches, declaring: “Protecting your data is the responsibility of the company that has been entrusted with it.”
In 2023 Slater + Gordon filed a class action in the Federal Court against Optus on behalf of customers who allege their personal information was compromised in the Optus data breach revealed in September 2022.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute director of Cyber, Technology and Security Programs James Corera told The Australian the breach was alarming but could have happened to many major Australian companies.
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