Here’s a short piece in the Australian Business Specatator referring to a piece in the Australian Financial Review…
The author writes…
Several large Australian law firms including Mallesons Stephen Jaques are in merger or alliance talks with overseas firms, The Australian Financial Review reports.
The discussions continue a trend of increasing globalisation of the local law industry, which recently included the arrival of international powerhouses Norton Rose and Allen & Overy, the paper reports.
Allen & Overy local managing partner Grant Fuzi told the Financial Review that Australia’s legal landscape would change dramatically over the next five years.
Australia is one of the industry’s “tectonic plates of global growth,” he said.
Beaton Reasearch and Consulting executive chairman George Beaton, whose company is advising on some merger talks, said “there’s some substance in some of [the rumours] involving the top five or six firms.”
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Law-firms-pd20100514-5ERXE?OpenDocument&src=hp18
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Sorry we can’t refer you back to the AFR .. behind a paid firewall these days so you’ll need to access somebody else’s online sub or dig up a print copy.
All we can say is that? now Mr Fuzi has seriously upset his previous employers , Clayton Utz,? he seems intent on being the bearer of bad news for those entrenched in the old way of doing things.
These changes in the market had to come eventually to Australia and like most other things people don’t like change. So looks like Fuzi will be perceived as the Germaine Greer of the Aus legal market… not long before someone accuses him of being un-Australian !
Gone are the cozy days and welcome to the international legal market.
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