It’s taken me more than a year to do my second post – blogging seems so self-serving that I keep deleting what I write.  The last year has been very interesting; business conditions have been difficult and I have had a wide variety of clients and matters.  I claim to specialize in IT law, but much of my work has been acting for people – defending a client from their previous law firm, the usual debt recovery work, sales of businesses, employment law, family provision work, wills, probate, a divorce and even an assault case.

I went to California to find out about venture capital and the opportunities for Australian businesses in the United States, but I am pleased to report that there is now a healthy Angel Finance sector in Australia with well organised investors. When I started my first technology company more than 25 years ago there was no funding in Australia, but now, if you have a good business plan, there are opportunities to get it funded.

I also went to London to attend a conference on legal practice management.  The UK is introducing new regulations for law firms in October of this year.  Several of these changes have been operational in Australia for a while and it was interesting to see what the British thought in prospect about what we in Australia have experienced in retrospect.  There will be many changes in legal practice as technology and deregulation bring benefits for clients as well as for lawyers.  An Englishman, Richard Susskind was an early thinker in this area, and we started the goodlawyers.com.au website more than a year ago as an experiment in legal marketing.  Comments would be welcome.