Ashurst Australia chairman Mary Padbury was interested in IP law before it was cool and knew the globalisation of Australia’s legal sector was inevitable. She chats to Claire Chaffey about growth, leadership and moving with the times.

To say that Mary Padbury is loyal is probably an understatement, given that she has been with the same firm for 31 years.

Her father was overjoyed when she decided to study law, as he’d missed out on his chance of obtaining a law degree when World War II got in the way.

Luckily for her father, Padbury was “useless” at mathematics and languages, and saw her options as limited.

After graduating from Melbourne University “a long time ago”, a young Padbury did her articles with what was then Melbourne firm Blake & Wriggle (Blakes).

At university, she’d been amongst only the second wave of students to have ever studied intellectual property law, and she was hooked.

“I was an early but enthusiastic guinea pig for IP law,” she laughs. “I arrived at Blakes and said I wanted to do IP, and they said, ‘Oh, what’s that?’”

Being a broad, commercially-focused firm, Blakes was probably not the best place for a burgeoning IP lawyer, and Padbury seized the opportunity to do a short stint at London IP firm Bristows.

“Bristows was a firm really devoted to IP and with a really different business model to Blakes,” she says. “It was a good early lesson that there are a number of ways to do things successfully. I enjoyed that, though I did miss being part of a broader commercial practice.”

Soon enough, Padbury returned to Australia - and Blakes - with the intention of sinking her teeth into what was by then a growing IP practice.

Moving on up

In 1988, Blake & Wriggle merged with Dawson Waldron, forming the national powerhouse of Blake Dawson Waldron.

For Padbury, the change presented new and welcome opportunities.

“It was personally very exciting, because they had a much more established IP practice and there were lots of possibilities,” she says.

“We literally woke up and were part of a national firm, having been part of a state firm. All of a sudden we had new colleagues and new client opportunities and just a whole different and much broader sense of existence.

“That was very exciting, and in some ways I see that what we have done on an international scale has a similar kind of feel.”

Padbury is referring, of course, to the recent merger of Blake Dawson with UK firm Ashurst LLP, which saw the top-tier firm become Ashurst Australia.

The merger was formalised on 1 March and is something Padbury says was inevitable.

“I was the firm’s resident partner in London for 2001 and 2002. It was a great chance to see the changes in the profession happening in Europe,” she says.

“In the mid-80s, the English firms were very much going to the continent and merging and taking over … In the early 2000s, the US firms really came to London in a big way, so I saw two big waves of transition, which meant I always thought that what is happening in Australia now was fairly inevitable. It just needed the right conditions.”

And now that the ball is rolling, so to speak, Padbury says further change is on the cards.

“We are clearly at a tipping point,” she says. “Just as we became a national profession in the late 80s and early 90s, the larger firms are in the process of becoming part of an international profession. Our deal with Ashurst won’t be the last. Other firms will follow suit, and that will have implications for other segments in the market.”

Such implications, she says, include a fragmentation of the legal services market into smaller and more distinct practice areas - and perhaps even the end of the generalist law firm.

“When I go to the US, I am always struck by the fact that people focus on [very specific practice areas],” she says. “I think you’ll see more of that here. You’ll have fewer firms trying to do everything, and more of them really focusing on what they think they’re good at or what their client base is interested in.”

The challenge of leadership

While Padbury says the merger with Ashurst presents a fantastic opportunity, she acknowledges that full integration, which is scheduled to be completed by 2014, will have its challenges.

“The most important thing for us is to fully integrate happily and effectively,” she says. “Like any major change program, there will be a lot of challenges, and it won’t be for everyone. I want to contribute to that as best I can and manage it as smoothly and sensibly as possible.”

Padbury believes this means effectively leading the firm without necessarily being seen to do so.

“The best sort of leadership is leadership that people don’t particularly notice,” she says. “I do think the role of anyone in the firm with responsibility is to serve the firm and the firm’s interests. I am not a big one for the ‘leader on the hill’ scenario.

“What you really try to encourage is collaboration, and when there are differences in viewpoints, it’s important that people feel listened to and that the decision that is made about how to go forward is a rational and fair one.

“If you can achieve that – and it is very hard sometimes – that is the most important thing.”

While Padbury will undoubtedly face challenges ahead in her role at Ashurst, she says the Australian legal profession has a plethora of significant issues which need to be resolved.

One of the biggest problems, she says, is the prohibitive cost of legal services.
“The cost of legal services is a huge issue, which goes to our legal system and inefficiencies,” she says.

“In my practice area, you can run a fully-contested patent trial in the High Court of England in about five days. We would probably take three weeks to run the same trial here, so there are those sorts of issues.”

Other challenges, she says, are related more to the economy and geography.

“The two-speed economy is causing some fairly fundamental changes in where the work is,” she says. “New South Wales and Victoria have traditionally been the dominant legal markets, but clearly that is changing and clearly Western Australia, Queensland and, increasingly, South Australia, are important legal markets.”

This change is something Padbury is well prepared for, given she’s seen her firm grow from a small, state-based firm into being part of a global giant.

But leading the firm through this latest transition is not her only focus, and her IP practice – which she is not in a hurry to give up – is looking busier than ever in 2012.

“Personally, I’ve got quite a busy year in practice,” she says. “I’ve got two trials and a full court appeal, so there will be the usual challenge of balancing the chair responsibilities with the practice responsibilities.”

This, coupled with what are likely to be regular trips to the northern hemisphere for regular Ashurst board meetings, means Padbury is set for a rather hectic year ahead. Fortunately, her relaxation skills are on par with her legal ones.

“I quite like gardening, going to the beach, watching films and reading,” she says. I like travelling, actually. I’m quite good at holidays, which is very important.”