Sixteen years ago, in a four-hour board meeting with her then three-month-old son, Laura Hartley noticed her baby stirring from his sleep.

Technically, she was on maternity leave but, as a board member, she needed to be at this key meeting to hear what was going on. 

“I was not going to leave the meeting; I knew the feed was going to take at least 20 minutes,” she says.

The 60-something-year-old chairman, whom Laura describes as “lovely but conservative”, realised she was going to breastfeed but didn’t skip a beat; at his retirement speech he noted it as one of his memorable experiences.

“Full marks to him that, at the time, it was not an issue, and that was 16 years ago. I can’t believe we’re having this debate now,” she says, referring to Sunrise presenter David ‘Kochie’ Koch’s remarks last month that women should be more “classy” and discreet about breastfeeding in public.

“This is the year 2013; I thought we’d moved on,” says Hartley.

Pocket rocket

Hartley wears a bright orange dress when we meet in Addisons’ Sydney office on Carrington Street. 

She is a petite woman, even with her heels on, but her personality has enough energy to lift the entire room. She jokes at her own expense in front of the video camera, wondering where to put her arms and hands, but it turns out they keep moving for the entire interview anyway.

Born in Londoan and raised in Sydney, Hartley says she often wonders why she got into law. Both her parents were opera singers and it was that influence that led her to an arts/law degree at Sydney University. She picked up economics, a strong influence later in her career as a business lawyer, and, for some reason, computer science.

“It was another world full of extraordinarily brilliant nerds who spent their entire time getting excited about translating four transcodes and things,” says Hartley.

She also studied historical archaeology, and loved it, but it was a love of words that propelled her through an English honours degree and towards the law.

“Every day as a lawyer I’m constantly thinking about things I did in that honours degree, even the position of words in sentences; there’s quite an art to that when you study it and that balanced the dryness of some of those law subjects,” she says.

A love of arguing (not in the objectionable sense) and the debating and public speaking she did at school also helped lead Hartley into the legal profession.

She was admitted to practice in 1989 and spent 15 years as a partner at DibbsBarker (Barker Goslings as it was then) before joining Addisons in 2010.

Now she advises clients including Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive, Sanitarium and SunRice on corporate, commercial and competition law. 

She jumps at the chance to discuss the global economy, the consumer market and domestic legal landscape, and is fully engaged by the issues tangled up in each.

“If you’re not passionate about what you do during the day, and spend a huge amount of time doing it, you really need to change what you’re doing. Life’s too short for average,” she says.

After more than 20 years, the law still provides a strong intellectual challenge for Hartley, who loves having relationships with clients, solving their puzzles and seeing how she can help grow their business.

Big not necessarily best

One thing that might have challenged her love of being a lawyer is the business model of partnerships in large firms. 

At around 20 partners, Hartley argues, there’s a tipping point where partners can no longer be 

involved in running the business.

“They become disenfranchised … I’ve seen that from my experience at [Dibbsbarker] where you just can’t really be engaged any longer in the day-to-day business,” she says.

“Partners actually want to be involved in the business; they invest in it; they own it … but it’s no longer possible to run an efficient business and have everyone involved.”

With the arrival of global firms, and mergers happening seemingly every week in Australia, this is a pertinent issue at the current time. 

The past 12 months have seen unprecedented partner movement at many global and top-tier firms — Andrea Wookey, Stephen Kerr, Daniel Blue, Suzy Cairney, Ruth Stringer and Michael Palfrey are just some of the top partners who have moved to mid-sized and boutique practices.

“I think this will continue also because there are partners who [can’t] see the benefit of going global; can’t see that strategically their client base fits anymore,” says Hartley.

Coming from a partnership of 36 at her previous firm to one of 12 (now 13) at Addisons, where partners are very much owner-operators, was a huge change after a long time in one place.

A strong communicator, Hartley quickly got talking to her new partners about how their practices were going and what was different in Addisons.

“I was quite vocal about it and I think they saw that and thought ‘mmm, she might have some ideas’,” says Hartley.

She was promoted to joint managing partner with David Blackburn in August 2011. They share the role so that they can concentrate on their practice interests and clients while splitting managerial responsibilities, but Hartley is very much the public face of the firm.

“I think the thing that distinguishes a really exceptional leader from an average leader is vision,” she says.

“Too many leaders are caretakers just going through the motions; it’s an easy habit to fall into for a practising lawyer who’s also managing a firm,” adds Hartley, but she tries to remain visionary.

The other important skill for effective leadership, she says, is listening.

“Lots of people, at all sorts of levels, have great ideas that either you haven’t thought about, you haven’t focused on, or you haven’t even realised is a significant issue,” she says.

Saving time for family

Having just returned from a family holiday on Macmasters Beach on the NSW central coast, Hartley appears lively, but this is her usual manner.

She has been working from home one day a week for 16 years now; since she became the first partner to do so at Dibbsbarker, 

Two small tricks have stood her in good stead: being consistent with what day she works from home and call-forwarding all her calls to her home office.

“I am far more efficient on that day I’m working from home than I am any other day of the week. I don’t have any of the interruptions and my clients can get a direct line to me without my being in meetings; they get immediate attention and the timesheet will show the results,” she says.

Hartley likes to keep busy; when she’s not working, she’s entertaining or cooking, embracing her Greek heritage among food, family and friends. 

 “I have a work-hard, play-hard attitude to life, so I play quite hard. I really do like the big family and friends’ lunch that extends into the afternoon and you have some good laughs and good food,” she says.

Her taste for the arts is satisfied by trips to the opera and the theatre, listening to music, watching legal drama Rake and reading.

“Not having the time to read for fun when my children were young was a big sacrifice but now I go to a book club, but I’m very strict. I say to my book club friends: I’m only prepared to read things that are really good … I don’t have time for rubbish,” she says.

It’s this straight-shooting, pragmatic attitude that has seen Hartley rise to the top of the profession while staying true to herself; and there’s nothing rubbish about that.