ABOUT US

About By Lawyers for Lawyers | The home office

By Lawyers for Lawyers - a collective group of practising lawyers, barristers and conveyancers - was born out of the desire to make the practice of law a little easier, safer and more profitable for all solicitors, but in particular for the general practitioner.

Guy Dawson (Chief Executive Officer and Editorial Director), a sole practitioner with more than 30 years’ experience, has an excellent understanding of the difficulties in keeping up with the complexities of ever changing law over a broad spectrum of subjects. Danni Larney (Managing Director) has a background in finance and journalism. In a desire to improve procedure in his own office, Guy, together with his partner Danni, initially developed a series of instruction sheets for use in typical matters encountered in a general practice. These were offered for sale as a suite to the profession and were well received.

From this beginning Guy and Danni developed the idea of creating a Step-by-Step guide, accompanied by relevant precedents. The guide would offer the practitioner a strong practical commentary on a particular area of law, accompanied by a full suite of precedents. These would be pulled together in a package by a tree or index, which created a matter path or matter plan to follow from the start to the finish of every matter. The organisation of matters by this means solved many problems for the general practitioner:

• firstly, he no longer needed to keep abreast of the changes in law and practice as this was done for him;
• secondly, he could train his staff by having them read the guides and use the precedents;
• thirdly, his office would now produce consistent, quality work; and
• fourthly, office productivity would increase dramatically as he was able to delegate with confidence and achieve the gearing necessary to change poor profit performance.

A commitment to best practice procedures has seen By Lawyers for Lawyers publish the product Practice Management, and associated state-based instruction sheets, to assist practitioners with management of their offices.

Today more than 20 authors from around the country contribute to By Lawyers publications on over 30 key areas of law. There are more than 5000 precedents and around 140 individual guides.

By Lawyers for Lawyers Australia produces works in the federal jurisdiction, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Tasmania, with the other states a work in progress. By Lawyers for Lawyers International has now released a number of Step-by-Step guides in Malaysia.

Many articles and books written about the law are by academics with little knowledge of its practical, day by day application. By Lawyers for Lawyers is committed to publishing works that are practice based, not academic.

If you would like to contribute to the Step-by-Step guides with either commentary or precedents, please contact us at askus@bylawyers.com.au.