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Top 10 stories for boutiques in 2020
This year, the most-read stories for boutiques demonstrated that sole practitioners and SME firm leaders were focused not simply on survival but on putting the best foot forward for a post-pandemic world.
Jerome Doraisamy
Melbourne’s extended lockdown was deleterious to the health and wellbeing of many lawyers. Not Katerina Peiros. In this interview, she details how she doesn’t really have a separation between her work life and other facets of her existence, in ways that other practitioners might – as someone who loves working from home, and whose hobbies have largely been compatible with lockdown, Ms Peiros has found that she has thrived during the age of coronavirus.
In this forceful op-ed, Legalite principal and former Lawyers Weekly Award winner Marianne Marchesi submits that simplification of how one practices law on a day-to-day basis and re-jigging practice methodology is the surest way to create a life that one loves. Too often, she writes, lawyers are forced to choose between their careers (and therefore their incomes) and their personal lives – but this does not have to be the case.
Earlier this month, AF Legal Group (also known as Australian Family Lawyers) (ASX: AFL) purchased ACT-based firm Strong Law to complement its existing Canberra office and allow for greater scale and broadening of its referral sources in the nation’s capital.
The post-pandemic world may be on the horizon, but that does not mean that legal employees shouldn’t be doing all they can to retain their roles and financial security. As Carly Stebbing puts in this instructive interview, done in conjunction with Paul Cott, “the fight continues” for individual entitlements such as superannuation, leave, salary continuance and other fiscal considerations.
In March of this year, a family law practice in the Gold Coast – once touted as a “leading force” in the industry – went into voluntary administration after being unable to pay its debts.
In late April, it was critical for boutiques to weigh up whether or not JobKeeper entitlements would be suitable for their business strategies. In this instructive interview, 3D HR Legal director Jo Alilovic discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the scheme at a critical time of the pandemic.
It is likely, FMCR director Sam Coupland believes, that the age of coronavirus has accelerated the trend towards mergers of SME law firms in the Australian marketplace. In an episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, he detailed how the appetite for consolidation before COVID-19 was strong, largely inspired by an oversupply of lawyers relative to the volume of work on offer. To listen to the full episode, click here.
According to Nest Legal principal and former Lawyers Weekly Award winner Laura Vickers, work/life balance is absolutely possible in a boutique NewLaw practice – but one has to be prepared to tick certain boxes first. One cannot move, she argued, into a boutique firm and operate in new-age ways and presume such practice will automatically result in bolstered wellness.
In response to COVID-19, Sydney-based firm Lehman Walsh came up with a unique solution: restructure its own business in order to accommodate “partners on commission”, and do recruitment on this basis. The new strategy was designed, managing partner Janya Eighani explained, so as to ensure that smaller practices weren’t left unaided.
The most-read story pertaining to boutique law firms this year was about the ongoing saga of G&B Lawyers’ fight against mandatory mask orders. This particular story focused on a fundraising effort by partner Nathan Buckley for an intended High Court challenge against the country’s lockdowns and South Australia’s “No Jab No Play” initiative and proposed legislation for flu vaccines which he said was “draconian and unlawful”.
