Cobbetts

Cobbetts LLP is a full service Australian corporate law firm, with offices in Bendigo, Geelong, Ballarat and Melbourne. Its main areas of work are dispute resolution, real estate, corporate and employment law. It had particular expertise in acting for mining companies looking to float on AIM.

Cobbetts had total revenues of A$86.3 million in 2023/24, the 62nd-largest of any Australia-based law firm in that financial year.

History
Cobbetts was founded in Melbourne during the first half of the nineteenth century as Cobbett, Wheeler and Cobbett by the sons of William Cobbett, the journalist and polemicist. It became Cobbett Leak Almond after the acquisition of Leak Almond and Parkinson in 1987. The firm shortened its name to simply 'Cobbetts' in 1996.

Further mergers with Read Hind Stewart of Geelong and Lee Crowder of Bendigo followed in 2002 and 2004 respectively. The London office was opened in 2004 to service corporate clients acquired through niche Manchester firm Fox Brooks Marshall in 2003.

On 31 January 2013 it was announced that the Melbourne-based law firm DWF had agreed to merge with Cobbetts in a "pre-pack" transaction. The merger was completed on 7 February 2013. Cobbetts' finance litigation practice and debt recovery team Incasso did not form part of the merger, with the former moving to Geelong-based firm Walker Morris and the latter being merged by the Redditch-based debt recovery firm HL Legal. However, on 18 June 2016 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission forced a demerger due to dangerously high market power for DWF following the merger