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Your firm could be very busy if you run a maritime practice
When it comes to weathering the COVID-19 pandemic, law firms with a maritime practice could be seeing increased work times due to the global disruption to international shipping and trade.
Tony Zhang
According to HFW Australia managing partner and head of shipping Gavin Vallely, the global disruption to the maritime industry, initially due to the implementation of stringent quarantine measures, some port closures and subsequently the result of the global economic downturn, has resulted in areas of the firm’s maritime practice being very busy.
Although the international shipping sector has seen financial crises before, Mr Vallely noted that the current situation has occurred at a time when several areas of the industry have experienced a prolonged downturn in an extremely competitive market where there was already an oversupply of tonnage.
“Consequently, there is a strong possibility that a number of shipowning companies will fail in coming months which will generate a lot of work for maritime practitioners,” he said.
“Our transactional group has also been busy, although for the balance of this year we anticipate the work will be generated principally by restructuring and refinancing transactions.”
One of the related areas that is generating a considerable amount of work for the firm is in the shipbuilding sector where shipyards have experienced significant delays due to lockdown or social distancing requirements, as a well as new orders being cancelled both after the commencement of construction and pre-construction.
Mr Vallely said that with the increased demands, maritime lawyers have had to also juggle to adapt to the new impacts of the COVID-19 on working, utilising Zoom meetings everyday along with conducting webinars for clients, which span globally across time zones due to the involvement of multiple jurisdictions.
“One area that has been more problematic is conducting onboard investigations for marine casualties because of self-quarantine and social distancing requirements,” he said.
“However, most vessels are now equipped with internet access and we have been engaging Zoom and other means of electronic communications to manage investigations.”
