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Multinational nabs vast majority of Aussie firm in bid to build out local scope
A multinational law firm has taken a team of 23 lawyers – including seven principal lawyers – and support staff from a Melbourne-based boutique, as it looks to bolster its presence in the Australian market.
Grace Ormsby
DWF has announced it will be “significantly increasing” its Melbourne presence, with a vast majority of WARD Lawyers’ staff making the move to join it.
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WARD’s managing director Philip Gleed will assume the role of executive head for DWF’s Melbourne office, while colleague and WARD director Scott Stewart will lead DWF’s Australian planning and environment team.
DWF Asia Pacific chairman Mark Hickey called it “a major expansion for our business in Australia and especially for our practice in Melbourne”.
“It further establishes DWF as a force in the Australian market, where we are growing at pace and attracting quality people who share our desire to do things differently,” he said.
“This new team will complement DWF's existing strengths in our global sectors of financial services, insurance and real estate.”
Philip Gleed said the WARD Lawyers team is excited to be joining DWF and they “look forward to helping them further build their already fast-growing business in Australia”.
“We believe this move enables us to continue along our path of doing law differently and to further strengthen existing client relationships and build new ones by capitalizing on DWF’s strengths nationally and scale globally,” he continued.
With the addition of the WARD Lawyers team, and the recruitment of three principals for the firm’s Sydney office, DWF Lawyers now has more than 130 people in Australia, including 24 principal lawyers and more than 60 other fee earners, Mr Hickey noted.
In the same statement, DWF confirmed that it had also recruited another three principals, but this time for its Sydney office.
The three new Sydney-based principals announced as joining DWF are Sparke Helmore’s Brett Henderson, McCullough Robertson’s Goran Gelic, and Australian Business Lawyers’ Sina Zevari.
