You could configure your Log4j listener in the web.xml instead of the spring-context.xml
<context-param>
<param-name>log4jConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.web.properties</param-value>
</context-param>
<listener>
<listener-class>org.springframework.web.util.Log4jConfigListener</listener-class>
</listener>
So it is up before Spring starts.