Despite COVID-19 case numbers in Australia hitting historic highs and the threat of an economic recession, law firms are cautiously optimistic about their ability to weather the storm without redundancies or reductions in staff pay.
A firm created by solicitor Mark Elliott as a vehicle to launch shareholder class actions has been taken to court by Myer over an unpaid $1.4 million legal bill racked up in defending a class action that was thrown out as an abuse of process.
A PwC partner who the ATO claims was assigned to work on a matter for meat processing company JBS to bring a “cloak of legal privilege” earned hundreds of dollars less per hour than his non-lawyer assistants, a court has heard.
Meat processing company and former PricewaterhouseCoopers client JBS has slammed as a “nightmare to the rule of law” a claim by the Commissioner of Taxation that the accounting giant’s internal protocols destroyed the company’s lawyer-client relationship.
The barrister acting for a former Deutsche Bank executive named in a criminal case over an ANZ share placement has ascended to the NSW Supreme Court.
Accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers used one of its legally qualified partners as a “postbox” to provide a “cloak of privilege” to work conducted for meat processing company JBS, the Commissioner of Taxation has told the Federal Court.
The number of new class actions has nosedived in the past six months, but experts say the drop does not signal a long-term trend but a recalibration by lawyers and funders, whose ingenuity is not to be underestimated.
An appeals court has upheld a ruling that Sydney law firm Atanaskovic Hartnell was not entitled to the bulk of $165,000 in legal fees charged to two media company clients defrauded by jailed former solicitor Brody Clarke, calling the firm’s attempt to renege on its undertakings “dishonourable”.
A NSW barrister has been hit with an injunction for working without a valid practising certificate after a judge made a complaint to the Bar Association.
Hall & Wilcox has expanded its corporate insurance, commercial and regulatory offering with the appointment of new partner Philip Hopley, formerly of Herbert Smith Freehills.