I have been consulting in legal practice since 1985. I qualified as a lawyer in 1977, and was for a time a tax lawyer with Clifford-Turner (before its merger with Coward Chance).

My consulting work focuses on strategy, globalisation, mergers and consolidation, economics and valuation, and ownership issues. As well as law firms, I have also worked with barristers' chambers, government, corporate and public sector legal departments, banks, law societies and other professional associations, and patent attorneys.

As a consultant, I practise predominantly as a sole practitioner, although I am more than happy to work alongside, or as part of a team of, other consultants or advisers. My usual approach is to work with a firm's management or ownership group to help them understand their business and objectives more clearly or in greater detail, but with an emphasis on achievability and implementation. My objective is to help a firm to help itself. I do not subscribe to the view that lawyers are inherently poor managers, or that my mission is to cross-sell further services.

In addition to my work as an independent consultant, I am also Professor of Strategy and Director of the Legal Services Policy Institute at The College of Law and a Senior Fellow in the Law School at the University of Melbourne.

In 2008, I was appointed to the Ministry of Justice's Strategy Group for Public Legal Education (chaired by Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Lord Bach).  I also serve on the Solicitors Regulation Authority's ABS reference group, the Bar Standards Board's advisory panel on the Legal Services Act, and the Bar Council's policy advisory group and ABS working group.