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Better Lawyers Group launches, with Enterprise Legal and Donaldson Law as foundation firms
A multiple award-winning practitioner has established a support network for innovative law firms and lawyers to push past outdated beliefs “stifling” the profession.
Jerome Doraisamy
Peta Gray – who won the Wellness Advocate of the Year category at the 2019 Women in Law Awards and, under her Enterprise Legal banner, won Regional/Suburban Law Firm of the Year at the 2018 Australian Law Awards and, at the 2021 instalment of the ALAs, took home the Employer of Choice and Excellence Award categories – has long been driven by the idea that things can and must be done better, if positive impacts are to be made, both within and by the legal profession.
“I felt like we had conquered a lot, we’re an option that people can use if they want a different approach to legal services or if they want to work in a different law firm to other traditional firms, but it felt like a small impact.”
“We’re one firm, so I think for the last few years it’s been apparent to me that to spread that impact, we need to go bigger.”
To this end, she has launched the Better Lawyers Group – a home and support network for firms and solicitors who employ innovative approaches and want to redefine the boundaries of possibility in Australia’s legal profession.
For Gray, part of going “bigger” meant waiting for the right firm to acquire as a foundational brand, alongside Enterprise Legal, under the Better Lawyers Group umbrella.
In Donaldson Law – which specialises in abuse claims and landholder compensation matters – she found an ideal acquisition.
In a statement, Gray noted that both practices have already proven that smaller, regional outfits can adopt modern and innovative practices, policies, and incentives just as well as firms at the big end of town.
“I can’t think of a better firm than Donaldson Law to be the first firm to join with Enterprise Legal to be the founding brands; they’re so aligned,” Gray said.
“The Better Lawyers Group is a plan I’ve had for years, and I was waiting for the right firm to become available – it has the ability to be very impactful within the legal sector.”
Donaldson Law director Adair Donaldson said the sale was, in his eyes, a “perfect fit”.
“We always had a vision when we created Donaldson Law that we wanted to be doing law differently. We wanted to be innovative, we didn’t want to be like any other law firm,” he said.
The sale to Better Lawyers Group, Donaldson Law practice manager Samantha Donaldson added, provided the best outcome for the firm’s staff and clients.
“We are entrusting this firm that we’ve poured our heart and soul into to Peta. We wanted it to have longevity and be successful, and with Peta, all those things align,” she said.
“Finding any lawyer who is both an extremely knowledgeable and excellent lawyer but also a good manager of a business and a law firm – to get those two skills in one person is really rare.”
Adair Donaldson said he is ready for someone else to take Donaldson Law to “the next level”, while he takes on new projects, involving mediation work and education, and advocacy around gendered violence.
“More than anything, we wanted not only a safe place for our clients, a place where our clients were going to be looked after because they’re the most vulnerable people, we wanted somewhere that understood trauma, someone who got what we were trying to achieve,” he said.
“We wanted to make sure that our staff were going to a place where they would be respected. We wanted that legacy to live on, and that meant finding someone with the same values.”
“I’m a huge fan of Peta. Words I’d use to describe her are courageous, innovative, assertive, book smart, street smart, go-getter, fearless.”
Looking ahead, Gray said that the long-term vision for Better Lawyers Group is to act as a network.
“You don’t even necessarily have to be a fully owned brand under it – my long-term goal is to offer a network of support to regional and rural firms, so if you do want to go back to your hometown and start a firm but you don’t know the business side of how to do that, they’re the kinds of things you can tap into as part of the Better Lawyers Group,” she said.
For the profession at large, Gray said the message from this new group and its foundation firms is that firm owners “absolutely” can do things differently.
“Don’t be disillusioned, look around. It is easier now than when I did it 10 years ago and when Adair did it 20 years ago, but the thing you can’t sub out is hard work,” she said.
Jerome Doraisamy
Jerome Doraisamy is the editor of Lawyers Weekly. A former lawyer, he has worked at Momentum Media as a journalist on Lawyers Weekly since February 2018, and has served as editor since March 2022. He is also the host of all five shows under The Lawyers Weekly Podcast Network, and has overseen the brand's audio medium growth from 4,000 downloads per month to over 60,000 downloads per month, making The Lawyers Weekly Show the most popular industry-specific podcast in Australia. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of Minds Count.
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