Ward Keller Lawyers is one of the oldest, if not the oldest firm in the Northern Territory, but by no means is it doing things the old way.

Opening its doors in 1963, this year Ward Keller is branching out into new and developing areas of law, including Islamic banking and finance and the provision of services to US citizens at a spy base in Alice Springs - where the firm recently opened its newest office.

"We're being creative and innovative and we live in the outback! Just because you live in Darwin it doesn't mean you can't lead the way," said partner and soon-to-be managing partner of Ward Keller, Leon Loganathan.

Through some key relationships developed by way of the firm's membership with Lawyers Associated Worldwide (LAW), Loganathan recently came up with the idea to utilise the firm's relationships with US firms and offer legal services to US citizens working at the Pine Gap joint Australian-US intelligence base in Alice Springs.

Officially called "The Joint Defence Space Research Facility", Loganathan explains how the firm provides services to US workers at the base regarding a variety of legal matters in their US home states, such as the purchase of property or wills and estates issues.

"What we are offering, through LAW, is the ability for people that work at Pine Gap with issues back in the States to discuss them with us and for us to engage the solicitors back home, or for us to put them in touch with solicitors back home. Either way it works," Loganathan says.

And he says it's the key relationships the firm has developed and maintained with overseas firms through LAW which has allowed them to provide such a service, as well as their new migration law practice established last month.

"Once again, through LAW, we thought there are interesting opportunities there for us to have arrangements with law firms that we know in the Asian region [and] through that we can effectively tap into the clients of the law firms in these other jurisdictions.

"Effectively it's almost like having an office in another jurisdiction, in another country, without actually having an office there," he says.

With mining and resources, and stamp duty and state taxes as niche areas of work, Ward Keller is also starting to take advantage of a "massive growth industry" - Islamic banking and finance.

"Islamic banking is a very interesting concept," Loganathan says. "It's a massive growth industry in south-east Asia and in fact, the Middle East and the UK."

And aside from that Loganathan has other ideas up his sleeve, flagging a possible expansion to East Timor where he says there are some "wonderful, wonderful opportunities".

"There are a lot of East Timorese that are doing business in Darwin. The clincher, I guess, is there is a huge UN contingent in East Timor and where I see the opportunities, is having a branch office in East Timor and servicing the UN people through LAW."

Born in Malaysia, growing up in Perth and with six years experience working as a lawyer at Ernst & Young in Sydney, as the new managing partner of Ward Keller, Loganathan is certainly equipped to continue the firm's lead.

- Briana Everett

>> Read more about the lawyers leading their firms through innovation and ideas in our Firm Profiles series