A Newcastle-based firm has become the first dispersed law firm to open in Australia. Operated by former Gillis Delaney partner Marcus McCarthy, Nexus Lawyers will be based on the same model used by U.S. and British firms Axiom, Rimon and Keystone Law, whereby lawyers use a common IT platform to work together from client or satellite offices, but a central office or hub is also run to meet back office demands. “We have an office, people work from the office, but they also work from remote locations,” said McCarthy, who also works as a general counsel for a mining company three days a week.
McCarthy launched an online legal referral service seven years ago and had been watching the development of dispersed law firms overseas with great interest before deciding to launch Nexus last month. “For many years I have not thought the traditional structure serves clients well. It has a hierarchical structure that depresses wages for lawyers and reduces service and direct contact for clients,” said McCarthy.
Nexus will seek out a number of senior legal consultants who have left the top and mid tier firms and are now working independently. “A lot of skilful people are no longer in top tier, they are consultants,” said McCarthy. “Nexus is a way of connecting those people together, with a knowledge bank and a common resource they can work under instead of being sole practitioners on their own.”
Dispersed UK law firm Keystone launched in 2002 and today includes a team of more than 100, making it the largest dispersed law firm in the market. McCarthy hopes to replicate its success here with plans to open a second “hub” in Sydney. “It’s very much a shift in the thinking of how to deliver legal services,” he said. “I’m keen to see what the interest is and how responsive the industry is to this here; but I foresee that it will work as well here as it has in the UK.”
At present there is one other senior consultant and a lawyer working at Nexus, but McCarthy is in the process of finalising agreements with legal practitioners who were involved in the legal referral service. “In the next two years I’m looking at getting five or 10 lawyers on board, including a couple in Sydney,” he said. Legal consultants who join the firm would be incentivised to bring clients to the firm and refer legal work to other members of the firm for a 10 percent referral fee. “Everyone operates under the one brand, but they run their own clientele,” said McCarthy. The firm will provide lawyers with cloud-based operating systems and manage all the secretarial requirements; dictation, printing and more. McCarthy said rates would be lower for clients because there would not be the many levels of operation traditional law firms have while remuneration for legal practitioners prioviding the services would be higher.