Speaking at the time about her appointment, Ms Procter said: “The firm enjoys a preeminent position in the global legal market and provides a terrific opportunity for me to grow my practice both within Australia and abroad.”

She is not the only one chasing growth. In conversation with Lawyers Weekly following this appointment, Bakers head of financial services and funds Bill Fuggle said that with Ms Procter’s addition to the team, along with the promotion of Alan Darwin to partner in Sydney, Baker McKenzie has a strong financial services presence in all three of its Australian offices (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane).

“Our growth plan involves: the potential appointment of a specialist financial services partner in Melbourne within the next 12 months; adding associate level team members in all offices; building on our market leading position in the exchange traded fund (ETF) space (our team has acted on arguably all of the ground breaking funds in the ETF space over the last 20 years including the world’s first gold ETF in 2002, exchange traded bonds (XBTs), the first actively managed ETFs, the first single class quoted/unquoted ETFs, and the first crypto ETFs); building up our digital assets and fintech practice, and our extensive experience in advising on full range of payment systems and platforms; continuing to leverage our senior teams’ deed industry expertise (along with our straight legal expertise); and finally, working with our clients on their operational financial services needs including disputes and regulator interactions,” he outlined.

Such growth will not be without challenges, of course. Mr Fuggle noted that there is currently a shortage of good mid-level lawyers in this practice area, due to reduced recruitment intakes during the very early stages of the pandemic.

As such, he said, “internal training and development is extremely important”, while “increasing compliance standards and reduced risk appetites drive challenges for our clients and us as lawyers”.

Mr Darwin supported this: “Financial services legal teams need to attract, train and maintain the best and brightest lawyers; come up with workable practical solutions to their client’s needs in the context of ever-increasing regulatory expectations; and find workable and compliant solutions in relation to digital innovation and fintech clients.”

This being said, there remain inherent opportunities for teams in this space.

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“Increased regulation and technical innovations throw up rafts of opportunity,” Mr Darwin proclaimed.

“Our focus needs to be on thoughtfully rearranging existing and more traditional legal building blocks we have developed from past experience to come up with new solutions for new technologies, different methods of delivering financial services and diverse forms of financial products.”

Moreover, there is much to be excited about in the financial services and funds space, Ms Procter said.

“Despite the ‘crypto winter’, crypto and other digital assets products in the market will only increase, there are exciting regulatory developments in the crypto space and the retail market in Australia,” she said.

“In addition, the ongoing government review of the Australian payments system regulatory architecture will produce new regimes for financial services regulatory (FSR) lawyers to get their heads around. There is nothing more exciting for FSR lawyers than this issue of new legislation!”

Looking ahead, Mr Fuggle feels that the team at Bakers is “well placed” in this practice area moving forward.

“Given our firm’s role as the leading legal innovator in the financial products and services space over the last 20 years, and our well-established global footprint that can advise across the borderless jurisdictions in which many of our clients operate, we are particularly well placed to deal with the challenges posed by an increasingly innovative financial services industry and regulatory environment.

“We hope that our clients have a greater chance of commercial and legal success by engaging with us than they otherwise would have,” he concluded.