Top 25 US firm King & Spalding has opened an office in Sydney with a five-partner team.
The office – the firm’s 26th globally and first in Australasia – is intended to service Australian multinationals as well as international clients active in the Asia-Pacific region.
It will be led by Darren Gardner, who heads K&S’s global human capital and compliance practice. He is joined by four further existing K&S partners who practice across commercial litigation and arbitration, cross-border energy and technology transactions, and global workforce matters.
“We’ve been active in the Sydney market for some time, collaborating across our offices and practices worldwide to open doors to global opportunities for Australian clients,” said Robert Hays, K&S’s chairman. “Establishing an official foothold in Sydney solidifies our commitment and enables us to build on it.”
K&S said it has more than 30 Australian and Australian-qualified lawyers who span its transactional, regulatory and litigation practices and its global network, including Asia-Pacific where it also has offices in Singapore and Tokyo.
Gardner joined K&S in 2020 from Seyfarth Shaw and was previously based in San Francisco, according to his LinkedIn profile. He will be joined in Sydney by Damien Bailey, a TMT transactions specialist who is also based in Abu Dhabi and moved to the firm in 2022 having been a partner at KPMG Law.
The team also includes commercial litigator Jennifer Chambers, who joined K&S late last year having earlier been a Sydney-based partner at Jones Day, and employment specialist Luke Edwards, who joined K&S from Seyfarth Shaw around the same time as Gardner and previously divided his time between its Singapore and Tokyo offices.
Finally, Darren Murphy, who focuses on energy transactions, joined K&S in July after 12 years as a partner in Jones Day’s Melbourne office.
“Given the extensive relationships we have in Australia, the number of Australian lawyers we have firm-wide, and the successes we have achieved for our clients here by opening them up to our practices around the world, fully integrating Sydney into our full-service global platform now is the natural next step,” Gardner said. “Our global approach to serving this market is working well, and we’re eager to grow it.”
K&S’s Sydney move is unusual, marking the first entry of a major law firm since Dentons set up shop there back in 2016 through a tie-up with local firm Gadens. Including King & Spalding, only 24 of the top 200 global law firms have an office in Sydney, according to publicly available data tracked by Pirical. Hogan Lovells recently shuttered its office in the city as part of wider cuts that also saw it close offices in Johannesburg and Warsaw.
A number of smaller international firms have opened in Sydney in recent years, including top 60 UK law firm Taylor Rose MW in 2023 and Spencer West earlier this year. IP specialist Rouse also launched there last month after joining forces with Perth-founded firm Wrays.
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