Biglaw Firm Sent FAKE Salary Increase Memo... To Teach Attorneys A Lesson!
And the lesson appears to be, 'why would you believe we'd ever pay you?'
While “narrator voice” became Arrested Development’s enduring contribution to the zeitgeist — though Donald Trump “light treason” memes are all the rage this week — at least some folks out there must remember iconic character, J. Walter Weatherman. Weatherman was the one-armed actor that the family would hire to partake in elaborate schemes that end with his arm getting torn off in gruesome fashion because the kids didn’t leave a note or left the door open with the air conditioning on. This is all relevant because Knights PLC channeled its inner Weatherman.
The firm may not be as familiar to American audiences, but Knights has offices throughout the UK with over 1,500 employees. They also seem to have an absolutely atrocious sense of how to treat those people.
RollOnFriday broke the exclusive story on… well, Friday… that Knights sent its staff a compensation announcement heralding a firmwide round of salary increases and attaching an attorney-specific memo with the details for the recipient.
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“After assessing the current salary structure as provided under the terms of your employment, it was discovered that you are due for a [double digit percentage] annual salary increase beginning in the upcoming fiscal quarter”
When staff opened the email, they were told that the announcement was fake but that the attorney had fallen for the firm’s test pfishing scam. “And this is why you always refuse to open attachments from HR,” Weatherman would intone… were he there and also a psychopath hellbent on torching the firm’s goodwill.
Even as pfishing tests go, this is an incredibly stupid one because (a) why would a scammer even assume that the notoriously unpopular employer would give raises; (b) seriously though, if one hoped to pfish an attorney why would they tease a salary increase instead of taking a key client identified on the firm’s press release page, spoofing their email, and writing “please see attached draft”; and (c) wouldn’t emails from dummy human resources sites be among the easiest things to filter at the enterprise level, eliminating the human element altogether? Just so many questions!
In news that will shock no one, RoF reports that this all “went down ‘like a lead balloon’ and prompted ‘strongly worded emails, partners threatening to leave and incredulity.'” When the partners are deeply offended enough to threaten to walk, one might expect firm leadership to take a conciliatory tone.
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NOPE!
A spokesperson for Knights was unapologetic for trolling their own staff, telling RollOnFriday, “We take cyber security very seriously so engage a number of third party providers to guard against continually evolving threats. Our phishing campaigns are run by a third party provider, which bases its scenarios on the phishing attempts that are prevalent currently, to make them as realistic as possible. Unfortunately, they are seeing a rise in phishing attempts based on pay rises and this prompted the theme of this campaign”.
Pfishing attempts based on attorney pay rises? Because the industry matters, which is why third-party providers aren’t always the best suited for this task. We’d all love a round of salary increases but that’s not the reality right now outside of some aggressive boutiques.
Maybe that’s the real Weatherman lesson here. “And that’s why you don’t troll attorneys over money.” Except no one lost an arm in this scenario… though the attorneys might not have all had a chance to see firm leadership face-to-face yet so let’s not close the door on the possibility that it’s going to come up.
EXCLUSIVE Incredulity as firm sends lawyers fake pay rise emails [RollOnFriday]
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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
