Former Blakes senior associate Andrew Williams also joins JWS as a special counsel, bringing with him experience in M&A, foreign investment, cross-border transactions, and private equity transactions.

JWS national managing partner Peter Slattery said the appointments signify the firm's "long term outlook" for the future of public M&A activity in Australia, despite the general slowdown.

"We think the overall [M&A] market will be patchy ... but we're confident in our ability to win our fair share of what's available," said Slattery.

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"We have been wanting for sometime to broaden and strengthen our capability in this core practice group ... Where quality individual talent is available, we've got to ensure that we've got sufficient resources."

The firm is also looking to expand the size and calibre of its commercial dispute resolution group, said Slattery, and Bywell is key to that aim.

"Michael is an experienced litigator and we have been wanting to augment the skills within our commercial dispute resolution group for some time," said Slattery.

Bywell gained experience in complex litigation at SJ Berwin and developed specialist knowledge of the IT sector through representing multinational IT companies like French global IT services company Capgemini.