Cowell Clarke promotes trio
Adelaide firm Cowell Clarke has made three internal promotions to partner.
![Cowell Clarke promotes trio](/images/LW_Media_Library/Evans.jpg)
Paul Bradley, Catherine Evans (pictured) and Megan Jongebloed are all corporate and commercial lawyers with different areas of expertise, and have all been promoted from special counsel.
Bradley heads the firm's energy & resources and environmental group and regularly acts in matters involving large Australian energy companies. He has experience in mergers and acquisitions, foreign investment, cross-border transactions, joint ventures, private equity, commercial transactions and corporate law, and worked for a number of years in London and China. Bradley is a committee member of the Australian Mining and Petroleum Lawyers Association SA (AMPLA) and a member of the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN). He speaks Mandarin and has a keen interest in Chinese investment into Australia.
Evans has a focus on financial services, superannuation and funds management, and banking and corporate finance. She was admitted in 2003 and has had significant experience in private practice, and also in-house with a large multi-national IT company supporting a major bank. Evans is a member of the Financial Services Institute of Australia (Finsia) and the SMSF Professionals’ Association of Australia (SPAA), and is the firm's representative member of the Association of Superannuation Funds Australia (ASFA).
Jongebloed is a Personal Property Securities Act expert. Her experience includes advising on acquisitions and divestments of assets for businesses and companies in South Australia, nationally and offshore. She is a member of the Intellectual Property Society of Australia and New Zealand and the Licensing Executives Society of Australia and New Zealand.
Cowell Clarke’s managing partner, Jon Clarke, said the promotions underpinned the firm’s continuing strong growth and had been made in an environment of market contraction both nationally and in South Australia.
“While many legal firms over the past 12 months or so have been downsizing, Cowell Clarke has experienced real growth in the order of 10 per cent, and we are proud of the fact that our three new partners have been promoted from within the firm.”
He added that, in the current challenging market, there was much more demand from clients for alternatives to hourly billing.
“Clients have understood for some time that value is not dictated by the hourly charge but by what can be achieved without unnecessary add-ons such as paying for client education and administrative services,” he said.
“As a result, there is currently much more demand for fixed fees or staged-fixed billing.”