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Samantha Woodhill
Two Aussie Gadens offices will formally join Dentons on Monday.
Two Aussie Gadens offices will formally join Dentons on Monday.
The Gadens Sydney and Perth offices will officially become part of global mega firm Dentons as they pursue new and extended business opportunities.
“The other offices will be known as Gadens, but we will have access to all of them for the benefit of the Dentons clients and all of the offices will continue to work together for our national banking clients,” Australia region CEO Steve Healy told Lawyers Weekly.
While Gadens in Brisbane won’t be making a name change, it will be part of the Dentons network. Melbourne will remain as Gadens, with no formal ties to Dentons.
“We’ve made a decision that we want to pursue this opportunity and we still enjoy a very strong relationship with those offices,” Mr Healy said, adding that the global network will allow the firm to work with Aussie clients in their pursuits overseas.
“We’ve already seen a huge number of opportunities come in from all over the world and we’ve distributed those across our offices.”
Global CEO Elliott Portnoy described Dentons’ entry into the already-packed Aussie market as “dramatically different” in its ‘polycentric’ approach, adding entire firms with similar values to the network rather than going after lateral hires.
With further expansions on the horizon, Dentons became the first global firm to tie up with a Central American firm last month. Dentons global chairman Joe Andrew said the firm’s mega scale is proving to be an effective tool for quality.
“It’s simply mathematically more possible that we’ll have the exact right lawyer they need with the exact right skills and experience if you can choose from 7,600 as opposed to 760 or 70 lawyers,” Mr Andrew said.
“What we’ve discovered is that, in this new economy we’re all a part of, what the most sophisticated clients are looking for is people who are truly in and of a given community, who understand the culture, the traditions, the individual nuances of [what] it takes to get a deal done or a dispute solved in a given place.
“And it doesn’t matter about the size of the legal economy there. We are so large that we create a legal economy.”
Mr Portnoy said an Aussie-tie up was the result of repeated requests from clients of all sizes, from start-ups to Fortune 200 companies.
“For us, the ability to combine with an extraordinarily talent group of lawyers in Australia is the fulfilment of our clients’ desires. And we’ve already seen in a very short period of time, the flow of new work from offices all around the world into Australia,” he said.
