Legal Business

Letter from… Sydney: After the churn of the foreign influx, Australian legal elite look primed for their golden age

Some speak of the dawn of a ‘golden age’ for the market; others of a sugar rush for the country’s top players; while a third group warns of more challenging times to come. Whichever way you look at it, the feeling is that a new era has begun for Australia’s legal industry.

While relatively unscathed following the global financial crisis a decade ago, the country’s top banks found themselves at the centre of unprecedented scrutiny last year off the back of an inquiry by the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry. Launched in 2017 after years of political pressure to investigate misconduct in the financial sector, the commission’s reports had by February 2019 led to several serious allegations against major institutions, including charging fees for no service and continuing to bill people who had died.