A Ballarat legal firm which absorbed one of the longest running legal practices in the city in 2013 is set to close at the end of October.
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Harwood Andrews have confirmed its Ballarat practice would be closing at the end of October.
According to the practice's website, the local office has nine lawyers, associates and legal clerks in its employ, with all staff at the office made redundant.
In July 2013, Harwood Andrews merged in Ballarat with Cuthberts Barristers and Solicitors. Primarily known as Cuthbert, Morrow, Must and Shaw after the original founder and his partners, the firm was in continuous business for 158 years in Ballarat before the merger.
Harwood Andrews' CEO Andrew Barnes told The Courier said staff were notified at the end of August, and he was working with principal lawyers Don Robinson and Andrew Robson to make it "a soft landing" for staff.
He said the closure was "nothing sinister", but the practice in Ballarat had retained "traditional working processes" after transferring from Cuthberts and would have needed to have major investments in technology to make it align with the rest of the company.
"There would have been more pain involved in trying to change it against their will ... to fit into a model that was not suited to them," he said.
The Courier understands a number of staff members from the Ballarat office have been offered positions at local law firm Baird & McGregor.
Harwood Andrews' head office is in Geelong, with other practices in Melbourne and Albury. It states it is the largest regional law firm in Victoria, but has closed practices in Bendigo and Werribee over the last few years.
The building where Cuthberts and then Harwood Andrews operated from at 101 Lydiard Street North was sold in June 2017 for just over $2.6 million. At the time, it was reported the legal firm had signed a new four-year lease from July 2016, which would stretch until next year.
Mr Barnes said he didn't want the withdrawal to be seen as an indication the Ballarat business community was going backwards, but they had undertaken around 12 months of discussions to ensure Harwood Andrews wasn't "walking away from something that was going to boom".
"It reached a point where our objectives were not satisfied in the time-frames our board was expecting," the CEO said, noting that Harwood Andrews has no plans to open a new practice in the city, as that would be "disrespectful" to the current Ballarat staff.
Irish lawyer Henry Cuthbert moved to Ballarat and opened his legal practice in 1855, just after the Eureka Rebellion, with a focus on mining law.
The firm took on several big mining cases including the Edgerton Mine case, which lasted three years and ended up in the Supreme Court.