Peter Slattery has wasted no time in expanding his firm. As the managing partner of Johnson Winter & Slattery (JWS), he has presided over the opening of four offices in seven years, with Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane adding to the firm's first office, started in Adelaide in 1993.

Was national expansion always on the cards?

"When you start a business, your timeframe is very immediate, and we were focused on winning opportunities for clients, and we won't looking 20 years down the track," he says. "Expanding our number of offices recognises that we needed to win opportunities in our target markets, which is in the upper-end of the spectrum of commercial work."

With a client list that includes Credit Suisse, the Macquarie Group and Qantas, it has been able to act on the high-end work it targets. A big part of its strategy in gaining such blue-chip clients has been the poaching of high profile partners from rival firms. Peter Rose was nabbed from Freehills when JWS started its Melbourne office in 2006, leading media litigator Mark O'Brien was brought across from Gilbert + Tobin and just recently, the firm announced that Allens Arthur Robinson banking and finance partner Matthew Allchurch would join the firm in September.

The firm's aggressive lateral partner recruitment is part of Slattery's strategy to provide clients with access to senior lawyers. The firm deliberately has a very low leverage ration, with almost half of its 102 lawyers being partners.

"We provide a greater level of partner or senior lawyer involvement [to clients] than would otherwise be the case," Slattery says. "It is the combination of expertise, experience and a higher level of partner involvement which gives clients a reason to consider us when looking to engage a law firm."

Total staff: 45 partners, 102 lawyers plus support staff

Locations - Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney

Click on the covers to explore the story of how each of these now national firms expanded across the continent: