John Ridgway and PLN Lawyers were recent joint-winners of the Lawyers Weekly ‘e.law Asia Pacific Box Breaker of the Year’ award, recognizing those who use innovation to meet current legal business challenges. The awards ceremony was held on 5th August 2010 at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and commends ‘excellence, innovation, and leadership within the Australian legal profession’.
PLN received various accolades from the judges including:
‘an extensive background and experience in Pacific Island legal matters has enabled PLN to devise and build a unique and innovative offering to clients wishing to do business in Pacific Islands’
‘The opening up of a sustainable market for legal services in the Pacific is a significant accomplishment. Innovation is not just ‘seeing’ the opportunity, it is ‘seizing’ the opportunity. John and PLN Lawyers have done this very successfully indeed ’
As PLN Lawyers Sydney moves forward, their next exciting project will be assisting the University of Sydney in the introduction of a new Pacific Law course to its Masters program which also aims to be available, online, to students in the region. The course being offered in 2011, has sparked interest from many countries within the Pacific and the United States mainland and encourages all those across the Pacific who work in the Law and Justice sectors.
As one of the Icon Awards Judges recognized:
‘PLN has provided advice and assistance to Australian and international companies doing business and wishing to do business with Pacific Islands. Training and up skilling of local lawyers and in the potential development of web based training program is particularly commendable’
The high calibre of Australian legal innovation resulted in a tie for the e.law Asia Pacific Box Breaker of the Year Award with Martijn Wilder, Baker & McKenzie's Head of Global Environmental Markets & Climate Change recognised for his work pulling together a range of legal practice areas to form what we now know as "climate change law", which has assisted in creating it and adapting existing laws to develop new carbon laws and trades. We congratulate Baker & McKenzie on this fantastic work, which is of course, also so relevant in the Pacific.