Boutique firms clash over client file transfer

The construction company and Matta, the clients and plaintiffs in the proceedings, were clients of M&A until October 2023, and after which were instructed by Aydn Shaba of Shaba & Thomas Lawyers.

A request for the files turned into “a lengthy dispute” and, by December 2024, had escalated to the point of the Supreme Court proceedings.

In January 2026, the plaintiffs no longer pressed for relief, leaving the Supreme Court to determine costs. On the plaintiff’s case, M&A Lawyers were still required to pay their share of the proceedings.

Justice Muston ordered that the costs be paid by the plaintiffs on a part-ordinary, part-indemnity basis.

The court heard there was approximately 794 gigabytes of information provided to Shaba and had been done “as quickly as practicable”.

However, the sheer volume led to some difficulties.

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The plaintiffs argued the documents were provided to them in “disorder and disarray”, and particularly because physical files were sent to Shaba & Thomas’ Barangaroo address rather than its Liverpool one.

“If you’re sending documents to the wrong address, that is indicative of an error being made on the part of the defendant, and a very simple error, about the production of documents,” the plaintiffs said.

Justice Muston did not accept this submission, having found the email with the request for physical documents identified the Barangaroo location as Shaba & Thomas’ “Sydney address”.

Even accepting the signature block included the words “correspondence to the Liverpool address”, Justice Muston did not accept it could be characterised as a “very simple error” or provide support to the plaintiff’s assertion that it was provided “in disorder and disarray”.

There was also some trouble sorting through the documents on a hard drive and through a secure file-sharing platform.

Shaba said this difficulty led him to believe, or at least suspect, M&A had not delivered all of the material in its possession.

The plaintiffs stopped short of submitting that M&A failed to deliver any particular document, but claimed it was not possible on the evidence to ascertain the “actual completeness” of the production.

They also submitted that Justice Muston should infer the form in which the documents were produced “did not actually amount to production of documents” under the Legal Profession Uniform Law.

They argued this was because of a requirement that M&A maintain their files in a manner “that any reasonable competent solicitor would be able to make sense of them”. Further, the plaintiffs asked the court to rely on the fact that Shaba was unable to locate certain documents.

Justice Muston did not accept the submission.

“The rules and statutory provisions relied upon by the plaintiffs do not alone give rise to an obligation that a solicitor maintain their files in any particular form or structure,” Justice Muston said.

“Given the volume of documents produced – and the fact that Mr Shaba had not been involved in their production and was likely unfamiliar with whatever system for the filing of documents was used by the defendant – it is unsurprising that he experienced difficulties in locating certain documents or categories of documents.”

Justice Muston noted Shaba did not reach out to anyone working for M&A to ask for assistance. Instead, he repeatedly wrote to the firm with assertions that it had failed to comply with its obligations.

By the time the proceedings were commenced, M&A had “repeatedly asserted” it complied with its obligations.

“Those repeated assertions were made against the backdrop of the defendant’s fundamental duty to be honest and courteous in all dealings in the course of legal practice,” Justice Muston said.

While Shaba may have continued to doubt the completeness of the firm’s production, the evidence did not establish that it had failed.

The citation: A-Civil Aust Pty Ltd v ADR Practice Pty Ltd t/as M&A Lawyers [2026] NSWSC 119.