12:00 AM | The Australian Tax Office could soon use stolen Swiss bank account data to identify Australians who it thinks might be evading taxes, according to a Brisbane taxation law specialist.
19 March 2010 | Mallesons has acted for Nestle Australia's Purina PetCare division on a new acquisition.
19 March 2010 | A Queensland-based law firm has expanded its nearly new Newcastle office with the appointment of local talent.
19 March 2010 | The Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto has signed an agreement with the Chinese metals group Chinalco to develop an iron ore project in Guinea. Law firms Allens Arthur Robinson and Baker & McKenzie are drilling into the deals.
17 March 2010 | New and improved standards for graduate lawyers entering the work force may be good news for them, but insiders fear the new Legal Services Award means more pay, but less work. 2 comments
17 March 2010 | The High Court has granted AidWatch special leave to appeal, giving the organisation the chance to run a test case to clarify the definition of charity.
17 March 2010 | Thomson Playford Cutlers has bolstered its health and aged care group with the appointment of a former Blake Dawson partner.
16 March 2010 | Clayton Utz endured and survived the departure of 14 partners to Allen & Overy, which launched new Australian offices last month, but the firm is still facing further losses. 1 comment
16 March 2010 | Middletons' workplace relations and safety partner, Kathy Dalton, wipes away all misconceptions about modern award rates and shows what in-house counsel really do need to be aware of under the new rules.
16 March 2010 | A Brisbane law firm's new marketing director will have to work to develop what comes out its recent merger with another firm.
15 March 2010 | Energy company Arrow Energy has received a $3.3 billion joint takeover offer from Anglo-Dutch oil company Royal Dutch Shell and Chinese company PetroChina.
15 March 2010 | Clayton Utz advises Southern Cross Media as it was poised last week to complete its planned management internalisation initiative.
15 March 2010 | The billable hour was set in its ways. So were clients, law firms, and the regulators. What happened? John Chisholm divulges what, and when, things ticked over for time-based billing.
10 March 2010 | Queensland's largest law firm has announced the establishment of the role of managing partner as part of a new governance structure.
9 March 2010 | A lawyer with almost two decades of experience in-house has moved into a special counsel role at law firm Colin Biggers & Paisley.
8 March 2010 | Maurice Blackburn has announced it has made steps to pursue a potential class against a waste management company.
8 March 2010 | Glass ceilings, slippery ladders, boys' clubs and fraternities are finally being eradicated in an elite list of law firms, the government announced today.
8 March 2010 | Freehills is acting as Australian legal counsel to Miclyn Express Offshore as it seeks to raise between $502 million and $623.7 million in an initial public offer.
5 March 2010 | Working successfully with Asia requires more than certain legal expertise. The relationship has to change, writes barrister William Lye
5 March 2010 | A Sydney law firm is intent on being prepared when the economy steps up again by ensuring its lower ranks are filled with lawyers.
3 March 2010 | Listed law firm Integrated Legal Holdings has suffered a fall in first-half profit, despite a 53 per cent surge in revenue, due in part to a major increase in lawyer salaries.
3 March 2010 | Six Clayton Utz lawyers had their right of passage to the partnership expedited this week after 14 partners last month departed for the Australian offices of UK firm Allen & Overy.
2 March 2010 | Blake Dawson has rejected claims it won’t lift a pay freeze implemented in the depth of winter that was the global financial crisis
1 March 2010 | A major intellectual property law firm has appointed a new chief executive officer to its ranks.
1 March 2010 | A would-be Mallesons Stephen Jaques lawyer has been appointed to one of Western Australia's highest courts.
1 March 2010 | Freehills has been appointed to a $806 million entitlements offer by Lend Lease, the most recent of several deals with the client.
1 March 2010 | Seventeen years in the partnership of one of Australia's preeminent firms and Michael McCafferty has found a new haunt.
26 February 2010 | Human rights are set to be breached by security measures outlined in the Government's Counter Terrorism White Paper, leading lawyers say.
23 February 2010 | Being a partner no longer necessarily means having a say in how the business is run, among other things. Michael Bradley asks, what is partnership now, anyway? 1 comment
19 February 2010 | Slipping between in-house and law firm practice roles would appear to be increasingly easy if Antra Hood's experience is anything to go by.
18 February 2010 | What suits Allen & Overy may not suit the rest of the magic circle, new research shows.
18 February 2010 | Freehills managing partner Peter Butler has resigned from the top post at the firm and has decided to "return to his roots as a commercial litigator", the firm's chief executive has announced.
17 February 2010 | More than 370 Baker & McKenzie partners and 200 of their clients will descend upon Sydney next week for the firm's annual Asia Pacific meeting.
16 February 2010 | Australia's first listed law firm, Slater & Gordon, has posted a 12.1 per cent rise in half year earnings.
15 February 2010 | Gilbert + Tobin has hired a new partner from Melbourne rival Baker & McKenzie, where he was head of the banking and finance group.
15 February 2010 | Corrs Chambers Westgarth's national human resources manager sheds some light on the dark corners of law firm hiring and firing.
12 February 2010 | The double hit of shock news this week that 14 partners from Clayton Utz would be departing, and moving to the soon-to-open Australian office of Allen & Overy, was also a shock to Clayton Utz, the firm's managing partner said.
12 February 2010 | Shocking Australian law firms last week was the news that Allen & Overy would be entering the Australian marketplace. What does it all mean, asks Ted Dwyer 4 comments
9 February 2010 | Less than two months after its merger with Australian law firm Deacons, Norton Rose is already moving people around within its Australasian practices.
9 February 2010 | Minter Ellison has made two senior appointments that it says will help international clients deal with regulators.
8 February 2010 | Clayton Utz confirms that fourteen partners have today tendered their resignations and will join UK firm Allen & Overy, which has announced plans to enter the Australian market. 1 comment
5 February 2010 | The fight is likely not over for movie studios and other media producers, which are likely to lobby for more legal protection despite a major loss in the Federal Court this week, lawyers now argue.
5 February 2010 | After much furour within the pages of The New Lawyer, Melbourne lawyer David Windsor writes a letter to the Editor on how he determines price structures to suit clients.
2 February 2010 | Having swung open its doors for the first time in some of the worst economic conditions in recent history, a year ago this week, a small law firm with offices in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne is still pushing on.
1 February 2010 | A major law firm has lost a four-partner team of banking finance and capital markets lawyers to its rival.
29 January 2010 | Minter Ellison and other firms have claimed roles on the recent initial public offer by Tiger Airways.
29 January 2010 | If firms did a better job at conveying and value, clients would not give a boot about time spent. John Chisholm writes.
28 January 2010 | Middletons has advised an international investment fund in its investment in Emeis Holdings, the owner of Aesop cosmetics.
27 January 2010 | While firms were willing to drop their rates to accommodate flailing clients in the global financial crisis, only a small per cent changed their billing structures.
25 January 2010 | Telecoms giant Vodafone has hired Reuters former legal chief, Rosemary Martin, as its group general counsel and company secretary.
25 January 2010 | A leading New Zealand commercial law firm, Simpson Grierson, has made four of its star players senior associates.
11:00 AM | Surely lawyers would thrive if they worked in an environment that animated them with a genuine sense of purpose, which puts their needs as professionals at the centre of its vision, writes Nick James from Optim Legal.
20 January 2010 | A new year begins and firms take it as a chance to show off their new partners and senior lawyers in a showcase of an optimism for the months ahead.
20 January 2010 | Law firms have their fingers crossed for a booming year in company floats and initial public offers to bolster their practices in 2010.
19 January 2010 | Clayton Utz has announced the promotion of an insolvency expert to its partnership.
19 January 2010 | Freehills has advised German fund manager Atlantic on the launch of its first Australian fund.
18 January 2010 | Partner intakes slowed last year and some firm partner numbers decreased. But, generally speaking, most managing partners in Australia dodged a bullet in 2009, writes John Chisholm. 1 comment
18 January 2010 | The new head of the body representing the Australian legal profession has made a bid to tie up all the loose strings around reforms to the profession this year.
18 January 2010 | Melbourne law firm Hall & Wilcox has announced four new senior associate promotions this year.
15 January 2010 | Law firm Hunt & Hunt is celebrating a decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal that gives its clients a refund in customs duty they have paid on imported goods.
15 January 2010 | Some may call it semantics, but the issue of efficiency and its meaning has legal services experts' tongues wagging.
15 January 2010 | Maddocks lawyer Nick Whitmore was awarded Victorian Young Construction Lawyer of the Year for 2009.
14 January 2010 | It's been months, and in some cases years, in discussion, but the end of time-based billing may finally come to the legal profession in 2010, experts predict.
13 January 2010 | The law firm that worked on BaoSteel Group's recent $285.6m investment in ASX-listed Aquila has justified its self-proclaimed position as a leading adviser to Chinese SOEs on inbound investment
11 January 2010 | Corrs has advised Daily Mail and General Trust plc on the transfer of 50 per cent of its interest in DMG Radio Australia to Murdoch's Illyria.
18 December 2009 | Whatever happens in the final hours of the Copenhagen climate change meetings, does it really matter whether a legally binding agreement is reached? Deacons partner Rebecca Hoare writes. 1 comment
18 December 2009 | Brisbane law firm HopgoodGanim has announced two promotions within its construction, infrastructure and major projects practice.
17 December 2009 | A spate of regulation on top of the various legal ramifications of the global financial crisis will keep in-house counsel busy next year, according to leading general counsel.
17 December 2009 | Sparke Helmore has hired a former WorkSafe Victoria lawyer to its OHS team in Melbourne.
15 December 2009 | A commercial law firm with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, has announced 16 promotions to its national team.
15 December 2009 | Corrs Chambers Westgarth is advising First Quantum Minerals on its proposed AU$372 million acquisition of BHP’s Ravensthorpe Nickel operation in Western Australia.
14 December 2009 | Mallesons Stephen Jaques has announced that its mergers and acquisitions star player, Tim Bednall, will replace Frank Zipfinger as the firm's chairman.
11 December 2009 | Freehills managing partner Gavin Bell has sent an email to all staff detailing pay expectations next year, and predicting further loss in next year's profit and in partners' incomes.
11 December 2009 | The Honourable Michael Kirby was the guest speaker at function held at a Sydney law firm last night.
10 December 2009 | Australian law firms are hoping for a resurgence in mergers and acquisitions next year as Australian companies emerging from the financial crisis step up acquisitions.
10 December 2009 | A consultant at Kemp Strang Lawyers has been appointed as the firm's chairman.
10 December 2009 | Blake Dawson has secured a position on the sale by agribusiness AWB of its Landmark Financial Services loan and deposit books to ANZ.
9 December 2009 | DLA Piper has announced a new round of job cuts in the Middle East, with an undisclosed number of its lawyers and staff also now heading for Australia.
8 December 2009 | A Queensland law firm has announced the promotion of two senior legal practitioners to its partnership.
7 December 2009 | Freehills is acting for Indophil Resources on its newly announced A$545 million takeover bid by China's Zijin Mining.
4 December 2009 | Retired High Court justice Ian Callinan QC was one of three legal experts weighing up the compensation due to victims of the failed investment group Storm Financial yesterday.
3 December 2009 | Australian law firms are sending their climate change experts to Copenhagen next week - Freehills, Deacons and Norton Rose, and Minter Ellison included.
2 December 2009 | Rumours of a merger between Clifford Chance and law firm Mallesons Stephen Jaques have again bubbled up, while the Australian firm maintains that no merger is imminent.
1 December 2009 | A Brisbane firm waves farewell to one of its founding partner this month.
30 November 2009 | Law firm Lander & Rogers has made two new senior appointments to its Melbourne office.
27 November 2009 | Baker & McKenzie has advised Sims Metal Management on its newly announced $400m institutional placement. Allens Arthur Robinson advised the underwriters.
27 November 2009 | As Copenhagen looms, the future of Australia's carbon trade scheme was thrown into confusion yesterday as several opposition lawmakers resigned their party positions in open revolt over the carbon laws.
26 November 2009 | Australia is set to become a global leader in international arbitration after Attorney General Robert McClelland yesterday tabled legislative amendments in Parliament.
24 November 2009 | David Fagan, the man who has lead law firm Clayton Utz for the past eight years, is stepping down as chief executive partner of the firm.
23 November 2009 | A Clayton Utz litigation expert has crossed the tracks and joined rival firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth in Perth.
20 November 2009 | Armstrong Legal has become Australia’s first carbon neutral lawyers following accreditation by the Carbon Reduction Institute.
20 November 2009 | DLA Philips Fox has appointed a new chairman on its board.
18 November 2009 | Confusion and administrative burdens in the retirement village industry has spurred law firm Minter Ellison to back calls for uniform legislation to regulate the industry.
16 November 2009 | Law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth has scooped a human resource award at the Australian Human Resources Institute National Awards 2009.
13 November 2009 | Law firm Johnson Winter & Slattery is hailing a court decision that’s secured a victory for investors in Lehman products.
12 November 2009 | Thomson Playford Cutlers has appointed a former Mallesons lawyer into its ranks.
10 November 2009 | A law firm has been ordered to alert its clients that they can reclaim fees they have paid the firm.
9 November 2009 | Elisa de Wit heads the environment practice at Deacons' Melbourne office. She has travelled to Reykjavik to undertake environmental assessment and now awaits an onslaught of work if the CPRS is passed in Australia. She speaks to Kate Gibbs
9 November 2009 | Having averaged 25 per cent revenue growth every year, one law firm has been handed a professional accolade. 1 comment
6 November 2009 | A Queensland-based law firm has announced it is on the brink of a merger with a corporate law firm specialising in finance and insurance.