Johnson Winter & Slattery's managing partner Peter Slattery has presided over the opening of four offices in the last six years. He tells Justin Whealing how it all started and where he wants the Adelaide firm to end up.

Peter Slattery is relaxed. But as the managing partner of Johnson Winter & Slattery sits down to talk shop with Lawyers Weekly,he should be looking dishevelled and rundown. While nominally based in Adelaide, he is in a constant state of transit, regularly moving between any one of the firm's five offices.

However, far from looking overworked, Slattery gives the impression he has all the time in the world as he recounts his legal career and the firm he started in 1993.

Growing up in Adelaide, Slattery finished high school in 1977 and university in 1982. While the music of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Adelaide's own Cold Chisel provided the soundtrack to that era, for Slattery, it was sport, particularly tennis and Aussie Rules that provided the distraction from study.

However, corporate law would be his main game and upon joining local firm Finlaysons in 1983, his legal career was born.

"I was 21 when I started practicing, and while I was hungry for experience, I had no real definitive ambition or career goals," he says while reminiscing about his early career.

As a member of Finlaysons' corporate group, Slattery's ambition quickly grew. "After two to four years I found that my attitude started to slightly change and I was working longer hours," he says. "I liked what I was doing and had a broad range of responsibilities, but I didn't find this to be a burden. In fact, I relished the experience.'

A firm is born

Slattery became a partner at Finlaysons in 1988, and had a one year secondment with the American firm Sullivan & Cromwell in New York in 1990-91.

On his return to Finlaysons he says he encountered a growing feeling of "restlessness".

"I was 32 and beginning to think about the next stage of my career," he says. It was a longing for something new that he shared with two Finlaysons colleagues, Tony Johnson and Nigel Winter.

In 1993 the trio "took the plunge", with 11 other lawyers, and started their own firm, Johnson Winter & Slattery.

As for any market research and due diligence conducted before the three started the firm, Slattery says there was little. "We jumped in and were determined to make the most of it and see how it played out."

JWS quickly established its own culture and projected an image to the marketplace that emphasised giving clients access to senior lawyers. "We wanted a firm where we all felt like we were all in it together," Slattery says. "We wanted to work in a firm where lawyers are not driven by individual fee targets, where practice groups were not allocated specific budgets, and place the emphasis on the quality of the legal product and quality of service."

Slattery says that even though JWS' charge out rates were comparable with other firms, the fact that they used fewer lawyers on a typical transaction (but used senior lawyers), meant that the costs for clients was lower than what they usually saw for similar work.

"Easy access to senior lawyers with strong technical talent, and an emphasis on commercial acumen, and the efficiency that yields, provided the basis for our external pitch," he says. "That is something we retain today."

Poach and grow

After 10 years as a stand-alone firm in Adelaide by 2003, JWS was entrenched as a leading local firm. However, similar to how he felt after a decade with Finlaysons, Slattery started to get itchy feet once more. Discussions about becoming a national firm started in earnest, and in 2004 JWS opened an office in Sydney.

"There was a belief that there were few opportunities to grow in the Adelaide market," Slattery says. "There was a drift in the corporate offices of client firms [to the east coast], and we wanted a slice of the bigger ticket items and needed to expand if we wanted to service the type of client base we wanted."

That client list includes some big names. JWS acted for Qantas with regard to some of its recent problems surrounding cartel issues and price fixing, and on the finance side, the firm acted for Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley as financial advisors to Rio Tinto in relation to the $29 billion investment by Chinalco. It also acted for a whole host of financial advisors, including the Macquarie group and Rothschild, on BHP's failed takeover bid for Rio Tinto.

A key part of its expansion strategy was to recruit high profile partners from rival firms. In starting the Sydney office, JWS poached six partners, including partners from the top tier, and when JWS opened its Melbourne office in 2005, it snared the well known corporate and energy and resources lawyer, Peter Rose, from Freehills.

"We had a story to tell in terms of what type of firm we wanted to develop, and that struck a chord with lawyers at other firms," Slattery says. "They liked the business model, and the bonus for us was that the lateral hires brought their clients across with them."

The leading media litigator Mark O'Brien and his entire team, including two additional partners, joined the firm from Gilbert + Tobin in 2006. At JWS, O'Brien has acted for Channel 9 in its attempt to have the first series of Underbelly shown in Melbourne, which had an injunction on its release due to the impending trial of Tony Mokbel and acted for Lote Tuqiri when his contract was torn up by the Australian Rugby Union, and he helped to broker a peace deal between the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs and Sonny Bill Williams when he walked out of the club two years ago.

"A hallmark of our firm is that we have very little turnover within the partnership," Slattery says. "That is achieved, in part, by being very clear about what type of firm we are in the recruitment process, and through maintaining the key principles that have been the key to our success." "I am always cautious of fads and trends."

Joining the big guns

JWS is now truly a "national" firm, with offices being added in Perth (2008) and Brisbane (2010). The firm has 45 partners and over 100 lawyers, and has resided comfortably within the revenue band of $20 million to $100 million for a few years now. However, Slattery says that the fire still burns within.

When asked if he wants to challenge the top tier firms, Slattery nods his head. When I ask him how long he thinks it will take the firm to get to that level, he says "about 10 years to build a reputation with the strength of the tier one firms".

"So when I say we are becoming a tier one firm, I mean having the established reputation of a tier one firm," he says. "While I expect we will be smaller than our competitors [within the top tier], we will offer the value benefits of a low leverage firm together with tier one expertise."

It seems that it might be awhile before Slattery, who can often be found indulging in water sports or spending time with his wife and three teenage boys when not in the office, will hang up the boots and retire to the family beach house.