After a two year respite from working in the law, Hay said she was eager to get back into IP work exclusively and was attracted by the Griffith Hack's growth, the calibre of its IP work and the opportunity to work with her former colleagues.

Work at a larger firm will peter out at times, said Hay, leaving the lawyer with work in other areas. This feature no longer attracted her. 

"Sometimes when the work ebbs with the larger firms then you are doing more general or diluted IP work … when you are an IP specialist you want to do IP. So here I do IP all day long which is great,” she told The New Lawyer. 

Griffith Hack’s legal team has grown 50 per cent annually in staff size since 2007, and the Melbourne team now consists of 18 lawyers, 4 partners and 2 special counsel. 

Hay, who has 12 years experience in IP law with a speciality in patent litigation, said patent litigation is "going gangbusters" because it is unaffected by discretionary decision-making.

Pharmaceutical and biotech patent litigation in particular are both experiencing a boom and Hay anticipates the trend will continue.

“A number of things have come together to make all sorts of prospects for intellectual property litigation, but particularly pharmaceutical litigation,” she said. 

“There are big new drugs emerging that are raising all sort of new interesting questions of law and presenting new challenges of how the market is going to deal with them, commercialise them and protect them.

"They are [also] entering into an environment where the government has identified innovation is critically important for Australia’s future.”