2011 has been a time of change and uncertainty. As Europe continues to fight off_x001E_ an ongoing debt crisis and global firms continue their Australian onslaught, the Australian legal market has witnessed a number of major lateral partner moves. Lawyers Weekly presents its Top 25 movers & shakers of the year.

Name: Matthew Stutsel

Firm left: Freehills

Firm joined: KPMG

Location: Sydney

Freehills lost one of its most prominent partners in September when Matthew Stutsel, a 17-year veteran of the firm, took up a position with KPMG. Stutsel was a partner in Freehills’ fund management team and said at the time that he was leaving the firm on good terms and simply could not turn down KPMG’s offer. “As well as being able to work closely with the corporate tax team here, we help the advisory business in planning and executing transactions and provide specialist support to the audit teams, so there is a large degree of interaction and team work,” he said at the time.

Name: David Watson

Firm left: Mars

Firm joined: Baker & McKenzie

Location: Sydney

David Watson and his wife wanted to come home. The Australian was based in the USA as the regional general counsel, North America, with Mars. For the previous seven-and-a-half years he had lived in London, Dubai, Jordan, New York and Washington DC, and the former Minter Ellison partner decided some stability was on the cards. Watson had used Bakers extensively in his role at Mars, and he describes it as a “funny situation” to go from being a supplier rather than a buyer of legal services. As part of the firm’s corporate markets team, Watson will look to beef up the firm’s credentials in the food and agribusiness space. “The magic circle firms are principally full equity partnerships, while Bakers uses what I would describe as the federated model,” he told Lawyers Weekly. “It has a greater global footprint, is truly global in its DNA, and has ‘real’ offices in these jurisdictions [in Asia], with lots of locals in them doing local work.”

The Freehills dirty half dozen

Of the 25 top partner movements according to Lawyers Weekly, six were from Freehills. While this doesn’t represent in itself a view the firm is losing its prestige with the top end of town, the loss of high-performing partners Tony Sparks and Adam Stapledon to Allen & Overy sums up the modern malaise of a national law firm. The loss of Neil Pathak and Matthew Stutsel was also felt keenly by the firm

You say goodbye, I say hello: the DLA Piper merry-go-round

Where do we start with this one? DLA Piper has had a turbulent first eight months in the Australian legal market. It lost eight highly-credentialed partners in Brisbane when the firm was still DLA Phillips Fox, and then, while the ink was still wet after the formal integration, six of its eight partners in Canberra left, almost closing the office of the Department of Defence’s firm of choice. Sydney partners Iain Rennie and Peter Tredinnick also didn’t hang around when the Fox ran to the Piper’s tune. However, while the firm lost many, it also picked up the wellregarded Amanda Turnill and Warwick Painter from Clayton Utz and Allens Arthur Robinson respectively.