K&L Gates

Thanks, Craig.

So how have you been involved in your career in lateral integration at K&L Gates and now at the Budner Performance Group?

Yeah.

So Hughes & Luce was the legacy firm I worked at that merged into K&L Gates in 2008.

And so I had a front row seat, obviously, being a... one of the leaders of Hughes and Luce that shepherded the firm into the merger, into the integration process for those mergers.

K&L Gates grew by merger and lateral growth, so I was quite interested in how that worked.

And then the global managing partner at a certain point asked me to be in charge of lateral integration, which essentially was assisting with the integration of merged firms, as well as the integration of lateral partners, which we would have anywhere from 25 to 75 lateral partners a year come in our doors.

So it was really important for K&L Gates, it was almost existential, that we succeed at integrating those partners and merged law firms.

Where did you actually train?

So I did articles, because I'm old, here in Melbourne in 1999 with a firm called Middletons, Moore & Bevins, which is now K&L Gates.

Ah, yes.

So, yeah, and I was senior associate at Middletons, as it was.

I did maritime in my summer clock ship with Middleton's, Warren Bevan.

And then I landed in commercial shipping.

There's a war story in the middle of this from a career perspective, but let's just say it was seamless from then to commercial and franchising was where I ended up predominantly with Chris Niku, who's still with the firm, a fantastic lawyer and partner, one of the senior partners at K&L Gates.

So I ended up in franchising, which is...

Um, so I highly, highly recommend him.

His name is, um, Goody Agahi and he's with K&L Gates and he is, he was just a fantastic person to have in your corner.

He kept me very calm.

He kept me focused on what was, you know, the main objective.