Mark White, a lawyer of 32 years standing, left CBP Lawyers in 2013, after becoming disillusioned, to start his own practice, White & Mason. His original firm, Monahan + Rowell, had merged into CBP. Speaking of his time as a Melbourne partner in CBP, he said: ‘I spent many hours in meetings that didn’t actually grow the Melbourne base. They were more oriented about Sydney.’

Cultural misfit

Talking more generally, he said: ‘Other people may have had a similar [feeling of] dissatisfaction in finding that as the bigger their firm got, the less relevant their client base was to the bigger firm…. If there is this cultural misfit it causes practitioners to re-evaluate where they want to practice law and how they practice law.’ Source: Lawyers Weekly