HWL Ebsworth could double the size of its new Perth office within twelve months and become one of the largest independent Australian firms within a few years, managing partner Juan Martinez has told ALB.
“We’ll be going in fairly aggressively to build up the Perth office,” he said. “There’s [currently] six partners. It wouldn’t surprise me if we doubled in size in 12 months.” The first six partners are set to join HWL Ebsworth next week, when local firm Downings Legal joins the fold.
Martinez says the firm will be recruiting across a wide range of practice areas, including construction, banking & finance and property. “We’ll be augmenting and gaining critical mass congruent with the size of the rest of the firm,” he said. HWL will have 154 partners as of July 1.
While HWL is known for its aggressive national expansion strategy, Martinez emphasised that the firm has not indulged in indiscriminate growth. “Even though I look to be quite anxious about growth, I’m more anxious to get to the right strategic result,” he said. “We haven’t got this anxiety about rushing in and doing something.”
He pointed to the firm’s 2011 recruitment of six Canberra partners from DLA Piper as an example: “I’m on record as saying that we waited three years from the planning stage to implementing the Canberra office; the negotiations took a year to link up with the right people in Perth. I’m very patient,” he said.
He added that while the current difficult economic conditions and disrupted legal market were presenting the opportunity to recruit talent, the firm had always been judicious with its recruitment. “An opportunity isn’t always a genuine opportunity,” he said. “Sometimes as the market frees up and more people [come onto the market], sometimes what looks to be an opportunity really isn’t. So you have to be quite selective and quite careful.”
He predicts that HWL Ebsworth will continue to grow. “We’ll be one of the biggest independent law firms in Australia,” he said. “We’ll have a compelling value proposition with a compelling footprint. There’s this line that’s pushed out that the only way to get quality [advice] is by paying a lot of money for it. That’s not true. The furphy that you have to pay through the nose to get quality; that furphy will dissipate in the next few years.”
This article is part of a longer interview with Juan Martinez which will appear in ALB magazine 11.7.