- by: CHRIS MERRITT
- From: The Australian
- May 30, 2014 12:00AM
ONE of the most successful new business models is about to be unleashed on the Australian market for legal services through today’s launch of Keypoint Law.
The Australian practice is part-owned by Britain’s Keystone Law, a 12-year-old business that has grown to 150 lawyers by pioneering the concept of dispersed practice, where lawyers work from their own offices or those of clients.
Keypoint chief executive Warren Kalinko said the firm would focus on corporate law and use a Keystone business model. It would use very low fixed costs to offer generous incomes and personal autonomy to lawyers, and lower charge-out rates to clients.
“It’s a law firm for talented senior lawyers who want to practice law outside the constraints of the traditional law firm structure,” said Mr Kalinko, who is a former partner at King & Wood Mallesons and former senior counsel at OneSteel.
“They get a level of autonomy and flexibility in the way they practice, which is like sole practice — but with all the benefits and infrastructure, services and collegiality of a national firm.”
Lawyers will be free to design their own practice and decide with their clients whether to use fixed fees, time charging, a retainer or any other form of billing.
Keypoint will impose no fixed quota of billable hours and lawyers will retain 70 per cent of the fees they generate, which Mr Kalinko said was about double that available in traditional law firms.
While lawyers will work from their own offices, they will be supported by technology developed by Keystone in Britain.
“In the UK it has attracted people who want the freedom and autonomy of sole practice but all the benefits, backing and referred work of a national firm,” he said. “It’s a hybrid of sole practice and firm practice.”
Keypoint’s central office in Sydney will provide secretarial and paralegal support, professional indemnity insurance, meeting rooms, IT systems, invoicing and marketing.
“It essentially offers everything that a traditional law firm offers — but without the office tower,” Mr Kalinko said.
Despite its equity stake in the Australian business, Keystone is using the Keypoint brand in Australia after being unable to obtain local rights to the Keystone name. The Australian operation is Keystone’s first expansion outside Britain but it is also considering launching in other countries.
Mr Kalinko said the business model suited established lawyers with clients. The foundation staff are former King & Wood Mallesons partner Philip Argy; former Harmers Workplace Lawyers managing partner Shana Schreier-Joffe; Melbourne insolvency lawyer Lee Pascoe; Canberra-based patent lawyer Paula Natasha Chavez; and former King & Wood Mallesons native title lawyer Justine Toohey.