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Retaining what’s great about a boutique practice
“We want to keep the benefits of being boutique and small,” say the two founders of a boutique regional firm.
Jess Feyder
Kerri Shaw and Gemma Bunner opened Shaw & Bunner Legal in February 2018, after several years of working together at a large national personal injury firm in Newcastle.
The firm has undergone several significant changes since its conception, from its beginnings in offering general services, including conveyancing wills and estates, personal injury, and compensation, to specialising purely in personal injury.
The business reached a turning point, where either they invested in growing the business as a general practice — bringing on other lawyers and conveyancers — or they went the other way — “niching down”.
“The decision to focus on personal injury was a proactive choice,” said Ms Shaw.
“It’s an awkward feeling turning clients away and no longer offering that service — which is paid work,” she said.
“We’d built a reputation locally in those practice areas, but we didn’t necessarily want to grow the firm for the sake of growth and build it in areas that we didn’t necessarily have a passion for practising in,” said Ms Bunner.
“It was important to pivot and to think about what was best for our business, our clients and ourselves personally,” said Ms Shaw.
“Moving forward and building the team purely in that one area had a lot of benefits to it, as opposed to being a general practice,” said Ms Bunner.
“You can make decisions quickly, you can be agile, and you can adopt new systems and implement them quickly as opposed to being on a larger scale.”
Now, the pair have decided to open an office in Gunnedah, having identified an area of growth with the region having no personal injury practice.
“We have the flexibility to be quite nimble as a small firm,” noted Ms Shaw. “If something doesn’t work, then we can pivot a different way or back again.”
“We certainly don’t have aspirations of being a huge firm,” noted Ms Bunner. “We want to keep the benefits of being boutique and small.”
The pair reflected on how COVID-19 brought unexpected benefits to their firm, making them change their processes to incorporate more technology, along with opening them up to a larger client base.
“Boutique regional firms have fared well during this time,” said Ms Shaw.
“It allowed us to embrace very different ways of working and has taken away the necessity for you to be physically standing in a courtroom in either Newcastle or Sydney or one of the capital cities,” noted Ms Bunner.
“Clients have been receptive to working in a different way than in the past,” said Ms Shaw.
“It’s allowed us to service more clients in different ways,” she added. “It allows solicitors to be based in the regions and still access great quality legal work.”
