K&L Gates

The Firm

K&L Gates' Australian operations provide vast knowledge of the Australian legal marketplace across a wide spectrum of industries. With lawyers located in four established offices in Australia’s leading financial and commercial centres—Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney—the firm acts for industry leaders, major corporations, capital markets, and venture capital participants; major financial institutions; and governments on groundbreaking legal transactions, both domestically and internationally.

With the extraordinary inbound investment into Australia from the Asia-Pacific region— particularly from Australia’s key trading partners, such as China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States—the firm has the resources on the ground to handle local and cross-border matters, projects, and transactions.

Main Areas of Practice

Corporate:

Lawyers in the Corporate practice are highly experienced in national and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, as well as regulatory, tax, commercial, technology, outsourcing, and financing transactions, including public and private debt and equity offerings. The firm serves as counsel to a broad array of Fortune 500, ASX 100 corporations, privately held and venture-backed companies, partnerships, private equity firms, and other investment funds, management groups, and entrepreneurs.

Energy, Infrastructure, and Resources:

Few law firms can match the depth of understanding which the energy and resources lawyers have acquired working on electricity, gas, petroleum, mining and resources, water, forestry, climate change, and renewable energy projects within both government and corporate sectors. With strong experience in mining and resources, the firm is a key player in the upstream and midstream segments of the oil, LNG, and gas industries, acting for all participants including multinational corporations.

The infrastructure practice group integrates legal services across multiple areas of law to assist project consortia, sponsors, lenders, participants, and government bodies on a range of major infrastructure projects, including public-private partnerships in rail, roads, ports, airports, energy and resources, electricity, water, telecommunications, construction, and property.

Finance:

Covering a range of finance matters, as well as restructuring and insolvency, Finance practice lawyers have a broad-based understanding of local laws, current market terms, and complex multijurisdictional financing transactions. Lenders and borrowers receive advice on mainstream secured, unsecured, asset-based, cash flow, and other commercial lending transactions. The firm also has extensive experience advising on property finance transactions, commercial and industrial developments, and large-scale projects.

The Restructuring and Insolvency team is experienced in all aspects of external administration and recoveries work, acting for financial institutions in insolvency matters, debt recovery claims, voluntary administrations, enforcement issues, and banking litigation. Providing advice to local and overseas banks, lenders, corporate borrowers, wealth managers, and financial service intermediaries, the team handles financings in almost every industry, including commodities, mining, manufacturing, distribution, media, telecommunications, entertainment, hospitality, healthcare, retail, and the service sector.

Intellectual Property:

K&L Gates has a leading Intellectual Property practice in Australia, spanning trademark, design, and patent prosecution and enforcement; copyright litigation; misleading information; breach of confidence; and other matters. The team includes both lawyers and patent attorneys who frequently appear before IP Australia and courts at all levels, often in parallel proceedings. As a fully integrated international firm, many of the matters are multinational and involve the coordination of proceedings in multiple jurisdictions. Clients are in a wide range of industries, with particular strengths in luxury products and fashion, sports, and construction.

Labour, Employment, and Workplace Safety:

K&L Gates has an exceptional reputation across Australia for having one of the most experienced and highly regarded legal teams in employment and workplace safety law. Experience extends across managing the individual employment relationship, collective bargaining and industrial disputes, handling antidiscrimination and immigration matters, and assisting employers to respond to workplace safety incidents. Work spans numerous industries, including construction and development, transport, energy and resources, manufacturing, and insurance.

Litigation and Dispute Resolution:

Experienced in handling any type of dispute, the firm’s reputation has been built from a consistent record of achieving outstanding outcomes for clients. An experienced team of lawyers advises clients on the best strategy to protect their business interests across a diverse range of industries, including information technology and communications, financial services, construction and development, mining and resources, retail and fast-mover consumer goods, insurance, health, and sports. Drawing on past successful cases, the Litigation and Dispute Resolution team is well equipped to handle some of the largest litigation matters in Australia and is aware of the time and costs associated with court processes and the value to businesses of resolving disputes, where possible, without proceeding to formal litigation.

Policy and Regulatory:

Policy and Regulatory lawyers have extensive experience in regulatory investigations, restrictive trade practices, consumer protection, network industries, infrastructure access, product liability, trade practices compliance, and risk management. Clients are advised in a range of areas, including competition, government enforcement, financial services, franchising, energy and resources, rail and port infrastructure, electronics, healthcare, aged care, life sciences, and pharmaceuticals, among others.

Real Estate:

The firm has one of the largest dedicated Real Estate practices of any global law firm. The team adopts a “from concept to completion” approach to all aspects of real estate, including sales and acquisitions, planning and environment, dispute resolution, project management, subdivisions, leasing, taxation and structuring, infrastructure projects, due diligence, finance, and structures and real estate agency law. The group also focuses on construction law and is experienced in both contentious and noncontentious matters.

Australia Managing Partner: Jason Opperman

K&L Gates Offices:

Austin, Berlin, Boston, Brisbane, Brussels, Charleston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Doha, Dubai, Dublin, Fort Worth, Frankfurt, Harrisburg, Hong Kong, Houston, Kansas City, London, Los Angeles, Luxembourg, Melbourne, Miami, Milan, Munich, Nashville, Newark, New York, Orange County, Palo Alto, Paris, Perth, Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh, Research Triangle Park, San Francisco, Seattle, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei, Tokyo, Washington, DC, and Wilmington.