Media Release

Defence has established a new legal services panel to provide specialist advice and assistance across the diverse needs of the Department for the next three years.

The new panel comprises the following law firms firms and practices: Australian Government Solicitor, Blake Dawson Waldron, Clayton Utz, and Phillips Fox.

For the past three and a half years, various elements of the Defence Organisation have operated separate arrangements for the acquisition of legal services.

"Combining all Defence's needs for legal services into one statement of requirement and going through the tendering exercise just once saved the Department and the law firms a lot of administrative and marketing effort," the Director General of Contracting Policy and Operations, Mr John FitzGerald, said today.

"The scope of the requirement covers commercial and non-commercial matters but there is also scope to include litigation services following further untying of legal services from the Attorney General's Department expected later this year.

"The quality of the tenders received was generally high. The evaluators had a very difficult job to differentiate between competing claims and recommend a panel of a size sufficient to provide incentive for the panellists to invest appropriately in the relationship."

A number of law firms including Freehill Hollingdale & Page and Minter Ellison have been selected as reserve panellists.

Mr Fitzgerald said the role of the reserve panellists will be to cater for periods of unavailability due to overload or conflict of interest of the primary panellists.

Further information:

John FitzGerald: 02 6265 6173, 0419 018 994

Issued by the Defence Public Affairs Organisation, Department of Defence, Canberra, ACT, 2600

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