The DMAW principal discusses why he decided to return to private practice
Last November, Matthew Fisher stepped away from an in-house legal career that included heading up Adelaide Airport’s legal team to return to his roots at DMAW Lawyers. In the first half of this interview, Fisher tells Australasian Lawyer why he decided to come back to private practice, and tells us what he considered the most challenging part of shifting from private practice to in-house.
After many years of broadening my experience in-house, I realised that I’m geared towards private practice. I love the diversity of work and the opportunities to build and work with a broad client base across a range of industries. After having spent so much time in-house I’m excited to apply my unique perspective and experience to client issues to help to drive value and great outcomes for my clients and their businesses.
I’m thrilled to be back at DMAW Lawyers and to be working with a highly regarded team known for their excellent counsel across an extensive range of clients and sectors. It feels a lot like home.
In private practice, you are generally working with clients at a point in time where they have already decided that the input of a lawyer would (or at least could) be valuable. On the flip side, in-house counsel are often faced with the prospect of working with business leaders and departments that might never have worked with a lawyer and so might not know when or why they should engage the legal department.
One of the biggest challenges for in-house counsel is building trust amongst your internal stakeholders (who are often changing) so that they feel comfortable coming to you for advice and letting you in the tent as early as possible. For some, reaching out for advicecan be hard to do and shows a level of vulnerability, so building that trust is incredibly important – but it takes time. In my experience, there is no real way to shortcut the process.
It requires dedication, persistence, and a certain level of pragmatism as you balance your professional duties as a legal professional, your role as a coach, educator and mentor on legal issues and risks (often pre-emptively before anyone knows the issue or risk even exists) and your role as a problem solver. There is no quicker way to lose trust and buy-in than by acting as a roadblock or handbrake to progress! That balancing act forces in-house lawyers to really sharpen their people skills, understanding of the law and their ability to provide practical solutions to legal problems. But if you’re able to do that you’ll be well on your way to knocking your in-house role out of the park!
I now have a much better appreciation for how commercial decision-making works “in the real world” and how the role of external legal counsel feeds into that. I guess that makes me a bit of unique proposition in terms of private practice lawyers and allows me to adopt a more client-centric, no-fuss approach to providing solution oriented legal advice.
Later this week, Fisher shares how he got started in law and why this career is “the best of both worlds” for him.
