Senior hires for global firm in Australia
The national corporate team at Norton Rose Fulbright in Australia has been given a boost by some senior hires.
Jasmine Sprange will join the team in Sydney as a corporate partner. She has significant experience in domestic in cross-border M&A across several sectors and will join from Clayton Utz in October.
Tax specialist Paul O'Donnell is also joining the Sydney corporate team as special counsel. He will also join in October and comes from
Ashurst.
"Our national corporate team continues to attract high quality senior lawyers from across the profession with deep experience in domestic and cross-border work for many of our core areas of industry focus,” commented Wayne Spanner, Norton Rose Fulbright managing partner in Australia.
Herbert Smith Freehills advises on $170 million Sydney land sale
Herbert Smith Freehills has advised Property NSW on the sale of a vacant land parcel at Macquarie Park in Sydney to construction company John Holland.
The team working on the $170 million deal was led by partner Julie Crouch supported by senior associates Thomas Lai and Rebecca Elgar.
“We were delighted to have the opportunity to work with Property NSW to unlock the full potential of this site, delivering a strong result for the people of New South Wales and a boost to the redevelopment of the Macquarie Park corridor,” said Crouch.
The total value of the redevelopment of the 25,000 m² of commercial office space is estimated to be over $1 billion.
Lawyers leading corporates cut litigation says study
Corporates run by chief executives with legal backgrounds are associated with far less corporate litigation according to a study conducted by M Todd Henderson, a professor at the University of Chicago.
The professor and his collaborators looked at about 3,500 CEOs, 9% of them with law degrees and tried to isolate the impact of a CEO with a law degree.
They also looked at more than 70,000 lawsuits across a 10-year period that were filed against a sample of firms.
Their findings, reported in the Harvard Business Review, was that lawyer-run firms experienced between 16% and 74% less litigation depending on the litigation type.
The largest reductions were in employment, anti-trust, and securities lawsuits. Contract disputes saw the smallest reduction.
Among the conclusions of the study was that a company led by a lawyer may have additional legally-trained senior executives perhaps because the CEO has actively promoted other lawyers.
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