RetireLaw--the story of a new law firm.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Purcell, Terry
• Date: 01 January 2004

We write this story looking back two years almost to the day that the concept of opening our own specialist law firm was born: RetireLaw

The firm's establishment was stimulated by several factors:

* our background in the non-profit sector, focused on initiating strategies to improve the community's access to legal information and legal services.

* a longstanding interest in improving the efficiency, accessibility and cost effectiveness of small law firms, the main source of legal assistance to the great majority of the community.

* the changes in policies, and in social and legal structures, that our aging population was causing, which in our experience were being ignored by many small firms.

We concluded that these factors (complemented, of course, by the profit motive!) provided a solid foundation for commencing our own specialist law firm.

One of the most exciting (and frightening) things was starting with a clean slate--no client base and a steep learning curve, but a wealth of experience in the legal sector and an enthusiasm about the practice of law absent in many of our more jaded contemporaries.

The starting point was limiting the range of our services to a relatively narrow area--the legal issues that those planning their retirement or already in retirement would be confronted with. We consciously excluded such small firm staples as conveyancing, Family Law and litigation of any type, taking the view that we knew many competent lawyers in these fields to whom we could refer clients.

We...