Freehills: History Of Australia's First National Law Firm
Australian History Antiquarian & Collectible Cultural Studies Business & Economics Biography & Memoir Legal History Corporate History
Freehills: History Of Australia's First National Law Firm is the only comprehensive chronicle of how a small Adelaide practice founded in 1852 grew into one of the country’s most powerful legal institutions. Written by historian Suzanne Welborn and published in 2011 as a lavish UNSW Press first-edition hardback, the 400-page narrative weaves court records, client files, and rarely-seen black-and-white photographs into a compelling corporate biography. Collectors prize this edition for its sturdy binding, dust-jacketed boards, and the fact that it was never reprinted, making clean copies increasingly scarce on the secondary market.
Beyond the boardroom, the book is a panoramic window on Australian history itself: gold-rush boomtowns, wartime rationing, 1980s takeover battles, and the 1998 merger that created a single national firm long before “globalisation” became a buzzword. Welborn balances big-picture milestones with human detail—letters from managing partners riding the outback circuit, diary entries of the first female graduate in 1975, campaign notes from landmark cases that shaped trade-union law, taxation, and native-title rights. The result reads like a fast-moving social history as much as a legal textbook, appealing to law students, business historians, and anyone curious about how modern Australia was litigated into being.
For collectors of Australiana, legal ephemera, or institutional histories, this first edition is the copy to own: no inscriptions, no remainder marks, and only light shelf evidence commensurate with a decade of careful storage. It sits equally well on a reference shelf, a corporate boardroom table, or as a gift for the lawyer who has everything. Keywords that surface this title include “Freehills first edition,” “Australian legal history hardcover,” “Suzanne Welborn UNSW Press,” and “rare law firm history book,” ensuring strong demand among bibliophiles and alumni networks alike.
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