Gregory's Partners

About

The Sri Lankan economy and therefore its legal system has traditionally been influenced by the island’s colonial past. Thus, the legal profession in Sri Lanka was traditionally divided into two fractions based on functionality influenced by a similar divide in the English Legal system.The Advocates who appeared in court and made oral submissions on the one hand and Proctors who handled the paper work and other procedural aspects of litigation they also attended to the conveyancing of property and other deed work being the other.

In the early 1970’s the government of Sri Lanka introduced a ceiling on the maximum extent of land that may be privately owned, nationalising thousands of hectares agricultural lands. This change was later supplemented by the liberalisation of the economy in the late 1970’s unlocking the true potential of the Sri Lankan economy. As a result of this Sri Lanka moved from a primarily plantation based economy established by its colonial past to a much more vibrant service and production based corporate economy.

Alongside these changes in the mid 1970’s the two arms of the legal profession were merged and unified. Thus for all legal purposes eliminating such distinction and all lawyers in Sri Lanka are presently officially referred to as Attorneys at Law. However, for all practical purposes this distinction was maintained and those attorney’s carrying on the functions of an Advocate are referred to as Counsel and the Proctors ‘Instructing Attorneys’. This separation has retained its virtues for the most part when dealing in litigation in courts of Sri Lanka.

In the wake of a corporate economy and professional changes within a short span of less than a decade the nature of the profession was completely reshuffled. The scope of substantive law practice outside of courts has since then gradually evolved and extended vastly beyond the usual procedural or conveyancing practice of that an instructing attorney is usually accustomed to. Therefore, services of many a Counsel were sought for legal advice on substantive law matters which did not involve court proceedings.

While the law firms traditionally performing the work of instructing attorneys and conveyancing of property developed vibrant advisory teams that advised a local and international corporate clientele over the decades ensuing the changes in the economy. The lager number of lawyers within such firms enabled them to provide a wide range of services with experts in different practice areas and across multiple industries enjoying a significantly dominant position over the out of court substantive law advisory practice.

While many Counsel sought to penetrate this lucrative area of work, they have been unsuccessful for many a reason including of lack of experience in the broader scope of the multiple practice groups or the lack of expertise across different industries and the lack of infrastructure that a legacy law firm would have the benefit of.

The Firm is spearheaded by a group of Partners who, together possess several years of experience in a wide range of legal services. Individually each partner is experienced and skilled in their selected areas and possess a minimum of two or more qualifications in law allowing the firm to deliver multi faceted yet experienced solutions. Consisting of second and third generation lawyers the firm places a heavy emphasis on providing an expeditious service through the use of evolved methodologies.

Gregory's Partners is a boutique full service legal practice that is a collective of Counsel with expertise in different practice areas and industries. We bring together talent and expertise tailor made for each assignment or project at hand, allowing a much wider range of expertise and experience to be available at our disposal which is sometimes even wider than that of a legacy full service law firm which is limited to their in-house legal teams. Due to the wide base of consultant counsels who work with Gregory's Partners, each of the counsel who is engaged through us has access to a vast resource pool most often exceeding the capacity of a legacy law firm.