Allen & Overy has set a target of 50 lawyers and 20 partners for its Sydney and Perth offices after their first year of operations, rising to 25 partners and more than 60 lawyers after three to five years.
Globally, A&O averages around 3.7 lawyers per partner but worldwide managing partner Wim Dejonghe said he does not expect the firm’s Australian offices to reach that ratio right away. “I think that’s going to be hard to achieve in one year’s time but I would hope in a year’s time we’ll be around 50,” he said.
Andrew Trahair, A&O’s co-head of global banking, said the Australian strategy is to concentrate on particular practice areas and focus on high-end and cross-border work. To this end, Trahair said, A&O would continue to grow the Australian partnership in the coming years despite there being no plans to create a “large firm”.
“From 17 partners, we would probably expect in a year or so to move to about 20 partners,” Trahair said. “Depending on the success of the business, we would then expect it to grow over three to five years to be in the range of 25 partners – possibly a little bit more.”
Dejonghe said A&O did not hold discussions with any Australian law firms to discuss the possibility of a merger. “A firm like ours always has soft merger proposals or we think about it but in this case we did not seriously consider any merger option,” he said.
However, he said other major UK and US law firms may consider the merger option if they are to enter the Australian market. “I assume everyone will consider these new facts and re-establish their position,” Dejonghe said.
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