HSF's Alternative Legal Services marks 2 years in Australia

Slater and Gordon hires class actions practice leader… BCLP appoints 23 to global partnership…

HSF's Alternative Legal Services marks 2 years in Australia

The Australian arm of Herbert Smith Freehills Alternative Legal Services (ALT) team has marked its first two years.

Its launch in Melbourne’s St Kilda Road in November 2016 was the start of a journey which has already seen both revenues and size more than double.

The team now includes 120 lawyers, analysts, and technologists nationwide.

“Our key differentiator is in the combination of Herbert Smith Freehills market-leading legal services and the innovative technology-driven approach of the ALT team – that partnership is changing the game for Herbert Smith Freehills clients,” explained Australian ALT director Hilary Goodier.

She added that expansion for the team is planned in 2019.

“We are expanding the nature of our offering from core disputes-focussed, e-discovery and corporate and transactional services, to working more closely with clients’ in-house teams,” she said. “We’re also making big investments in technology to drive even greater efficiencies in our core services and expand the nature of the products and services we provide to clients.

The ALT team is offered to all Herbert Smith Freehills graduates as a rotation to provide exposure to innovative technology and legal practice methods; and the team also has its own graduate program for legal analysts.

Slater and Gordon hires class actions practice leader
Slater and Gordon has a hired a new practice leader for its growing class actions team.

Emma Pelka-Caven joins the firm from Lander & Rogers where she was a special counsel in the dispute resolution and insurance law practice.

She specialised in financial services litigation including defending financial service participants and monitoring directors’ and officers' claims and representative proceedings, and says she was attracted to Slater and Gordon’s campaigns for individuals.

“I was attracted to the campaigns launched by the firm in response to the Royal Commission and its long history of holding corporate Australia to account,” Ms Pelka-Caven said.

BCLP appoints 23 to global partnership
Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner has appointed 23 lawyers to its partnership, bringing its global headcount to 576.

Most of the promoted lawyers are in the UK and US with one in Moscow and one in Abu Dhabi. None are from the firm’s offices in Asia.

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