A law firm, rebuilt.
For decades, clients have paid lawyers for hours spent filing, chasing and formatting. We built a firm in which those hours do not exist.
Our firm
We automate the work that can be automated, so the lawyer's time goes to the work that cannot.
The firm runs on Stella, a system we wrote ourselves because nothing on the market suited a lawyer who simply wanted to go to court. It files, diarises, researches and drafts. The lawyer reads, decides and signs. The hours you pay for are not spent on administration.
The time that saves goes to court. More than ten Victorian firms now brief the principal to appear for their clients instead of counsel.
The work
Three areas, chosen because they reward preparation. Run from Melbourne, with work across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.
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Criminal law
We act for people facing serious charges: indictable offences in the County and Supreme Courts, white-collar and corporate crime, fraud and dishonesty, drug trafficking and cultivation, serious assaults and sexual offences. The work runs from the first contact with police through committal, trial, plea and appeal, and includes bail applications, proceeds of crime and restraining orders, and the professional and regulatory consequences that follow a charge. If you hold a professional registration, a licence or a visa, we think about what a finding would mean for it from the first conversation. We also act in family violence and personal safety intervention order proceedings, which often arrive alongside criminal charges and have to be run with them in mind.
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Property law
Our property work is commercial. We act for landlords and tenants on commercial and retail leases, from negotiation and drafting through to disputes over rent, repairs, assignment and renewal. We advise on the property side of data centre projects, including site acquisition, leasing, access and power arrangements, where the usual property questions carry unusual consequences. And we run property disputes in the Common Law Division of the Supreme Court of Victoria: caveats and their removal, specific performance, deposits and default, rescission and settlement. Conveyancing is handled where it forms part of a wider matter.
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Commercial litigation
We act for companies, directors, shareholders and creditors in disputes across the Magistrates', County and Supreme Courts, and for individuals and businesses in debt recovery, statutory demands and winding-up applications. We also take on credit reporting disputes and default listings, and bankruptcy proceedings in the Federal Court and the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, from bankruptcy notices through to creditor's petitions and sequestration orders.
More than ten Victorian firms brief the principal instead of counsel.
The solicitor-and-barrister model has not changed in a century. A solicitor prepares the file, briefs counsel, and hopes the brief is read before the hearing. It is slow and it is expensive.
de Lange Partners offers firms something different: a solicitor-advocate they can engage ad hoc, who brings the oral advocacy of counsel together with a solicitor's grasp of the file.
Some brief us because counsel is out of proportion to the matter. Some because a hearing falls on a day their own lawyers cannot cover. Most because they have watched how the file is handled and want the same for their clients.
We appear on their behalf in pleas, bail applications and contested hearings in the Magistrates' Court; in family violence and personal safety intervention order lists; and in applications and directions hearings in the County and Supreme Courts. We hold every VLA panel registration, so firms can brief us on legally aided matters as well as private ones.
We act for firms by arrangement.
What changes when the admin is gone
Most of a lawyer's day is spent on things that are not law. When the systems take those over, the matter gets what it was always meant to get.
Nothing falls through
Every email, document, deadline and court date is on the file the day it arrives, without anyone having to remember. Limitation dates, return dates and filing deadlines are tracked by the system rather than a diary. The matter is always where you left it, and a question asked on Monday is answered from the file, not from memory.
Straight answers, early
You are told what the realistic outcomes are and what each depends on, at the start rather than the end, in plain language. Costs are set out before work begins, and you hear about anything that changes them. If a matter should not be run, you hear that too.
Prepared as if contested
The time the systems save goes back into the case itself. Every matter is prepared on the footing that it will be fought: the evidence is read, the law is checked against the primary sources, and the weak points are found by us before anyone else finds them. If it settles, you settle from strength. If it runs, nothing has been left to chance.
Advocacy, in-house
The part of a matter that is argued in court is done by someone who does it every week. The principal is briefed as an advocate by other Victorian firms, so the standing-up part of your case is handled within the firm, without the cost and delay of briefing counsel separately for every appearance.
Tell us what has happened
A short email or a phone call is enough. Say what has happened and when your court date is, if you have one. You will hear back promptly and in confidence, with a clear answer on whether the firm can act.