Carter Newell Lawyers

Energy & Resources

Carter Newell Lawyers is an award winning specialist law firm providing legal advice to Australian and international corporate clients.

Our Energy & Resources team has built an excellent reputation over 20 years of acting for public and private companies involved in the Queensland and Australian resources industry. 

Led by partners Bronwyn Clarkson, James Plumb and Johanna Kennerley, our lawyers are recognised as experts in their fields. We have the knowledge and experience to provide assistance to clients in respect of the full risk spectrum and lifecycle of a project, from asset acquisition, joint venture formation and project start-up, to the commercialisation of the asset, managing the project’s operational phase, and final decommissioning and rehabilitation.

Our focus on providing commercial solutions to legal problems in a timely and cost-effective manner has allowed us to build long-term relationships with a client base ranging from some of Australia’s biggest petroleum and mining companies to many smaller, exploration focussed entities.

Our specific fields of expertise include:

Litigation & Dispute Resolution

Carter Newell Lawyers is an award winning specialist law firm providing legal advice to Australian and international corporate clients.

Led by Partner Andrew Shute, the Litigation & Dispute Resolution team is passionate about applying their broad experience and in-depth procedural and practical knowledge, and collaborating with clients to achieve their goals in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

The team adopts a consistent approach of working with our clients in the early identification of disputes, and in implementing appropriate strategies to avoid or otherwise resolve them efficiently. We work closely with clients to identify and understand the facts, risks and real issues in each matter, as well as their client’s business and objectives, and the objectives of the opponent. Our team looks for opportunities to enhance our clients' position at all times. We also pride ourselves on providing independent and clear advice, and working collaboratively with our clients and the broader legal team (if applicable) to identify and give effect to appropriate strategies aimed at early resolution.

The Litigation & Dispute Resolution team regularly assists a wide range of private and public corporate clients in dealing with a variety of complex legal, factual and technical issues; particularly in the real estate, energy and resources, private equity, and professional service sectors.

We are highly experienced with court rules and procedure, and with all forms of alternative dispute resolution. In this regard, we regularly appear in state and federal courts, and have considerable practical experience in commercial arbitration and mediation, in relation to matters such as:

• Shareholder disputes and oppression claims
• Joint venture disputes
• Contract and leasing disputes
• Misleading and deceptive conduct
• Landholder disputes
• Mining objections
• Defamation
• Significant debt recovery claims
• Insolvency and bankruptcy issues.

The team is also often called upon to act at short notice on business critical issues including:

• commencing or defending applications for urgent injunctive relief
• advising on incident response, regulatory action or inquiries, in respect of workplace and environmental incidents, product recalls, and privacy and data breaches.

Particularly over the last decade, expectations as to how litigation should be undertaken has changed. In addition to being in the best interests of clients, it is essential for the administration of justice that proceedings be conducted in a timely, cost‐effective and efficient manner. Our team has been at the forefront of these changes, and they continue to drive improvements and innovation within Carter Newell and externally.

Given the ever increasing volume of data used in business transactions, our experienced lawyers focus on applying critical intelligence to collecting and reviewing information in a disciplined and proportionate manner, and to identifying and advising in relation to the real issues in dispute. The team has considerable experience with key e-discovery platforms, the conduct of e-trials, and major service providers. They have also developed software and processes for managing electronic information, ensuring we brief counsel, experts and witnesses quickly and efficiently, enabling us to focus on achieving results for their clients.

Carter Newell’s ‘One Team’ approach means that their skills are often called upon in non-litigious scenarios, including advising clients in relation to contractual or legislative provisions, the protection of client legal privilege, confidentiality and privacy issues, data and information management, and general risk management strategies.