Diving into Deals: Hall & Wilcox 90 Data Room Dash

"If you want same old, same old – we are not your firm."

That's the motto of Hall & Wilcox, a leading independent Australian law firm of around 1000+ people delivering outstanding legal services to corporate, public sector and private clients - both in Australia and offshore.

The firm's purpose is to enable their clients, their people and their communities to thrive, with their success dependent on the success of others.

Hall & Wilcox are renowned for their 'Smarter Law' approach, which sees them looking beyond the status quo to think differently and find solutions that are better, faster and cheaper. Smarter Law includes enabling technology, challenging business models, innovative pricing and creative resourcing.

Hall & Wilcox drive growth through purposeful hallmarks

Ed Paton is a Partner at Hall & Wilcox in Melbourne, Australia. He finds work-life balance through swimming every day, helping him clear his head and think through priorities. 
 
“I solve problems when I'm swimming, I think about deals. You get a release of endorphins – it’s a nice contrast to the cortisol and the stress you get when you're running deals and you're working late at night…I always have a better day when I swim.”
 
Ed has seen huge growth in the Hall & Wilcox team since he started, watching the firm grow from 8 partners and 100 employees to 123 partners and 1000 employees – from a single office in Melbourne to 8 offices across Australia.
 
Ed and the team have found great success by sticking to their values. “We live by our hallmarks - we call each other out if we don't meet the hallmarks!” 
 
They include ‘Better together’, collaborating and working as a team; ‘Evolve always’, being innovative by applying smarter law and taking advantage of technology; ‘Stay true’, focused on loyalty and longevity; ‘Be remarkable’, standing out and finding a better way of doing things; and ‘Respect respect’, treating each team member and client with respect, respecting difference and diversity, and making sure everybody at Hall & Wilcox feels welcome, equal, and can be true to themselves.
 
“Our purpose here at Hall & Wilcox is to enable our clients, people and our communities to thrive. We want our clients to succeed. We want to help our clients manage risk, to implement transactions, give effect to their instructions, make the transaction happen, to help them with whatever matter they need our help with.
 
In terms of our people, we want them to be fulfilled, we want them to be extended, we want them to have career opportunities, we want them to have a supportive, collaborative environment in which they can feel save and thrive.
 
We want our communities to be strong, we want to make a difference locally as well as operating nationally and internationally through grassroots pro bono work, access to justice or local law reform, the Hall & Wilcox Art Prize which is now national. It’s part of our commitment to community and creativity, and give artists the opportunity to showcase their work where they might not have otherwise had that opportunity. We’re very proud of it.” 

Harnessing the power of enterprise 

As a large user of data rooms in their transactional practice, Hall & Wilcox have an enterprise agreement with Ansarada, enabling them to harness the platform's powerful features with additional security - like enterprise multi factor authentication - and cutting-edge technology to streamline business processes, foster collaboration, and drive exceptional outcomes. 
 
“What it means to us is we can offer our clients what we regard as the premium product on the market, and we can offer it quickly because it’s an ongoing and established relationship.”
 
Having created over 90 data rooms in the last 2 years, the ability for Hall & Wilcox to tailor and customise these for clients and roll them out fast while maintaining security is key. With an Ansarada enterprise agreement, they can set up a Data Room with the click of a button.
 
“The way Ansarada is structured really creates order from what would otherwise be chaotic. There’s been a lot of data rooms – 90 in the last 2 years – so it’s really important to us to protect client data. We have a professional obligation to submit to privacy laws, so to have a secure platform which has cutting edge security, multi factor authentication, and can be relied upon to continue to evolve and meet threats that are out there, is critical to us.”