Three lateral hires arrived at Corrs Chambers Westgarth's Sydney office this week, the firm announcing on 2 October the appointment of Michael Harrison from Clayton Utz, Richard Lewis from Deacons and Matthew Seymour from Minter Ellison.

Harrison and Lewis join Corrs' corporate advisory group. Harrison was head of the transport and logistics group at Clayton Utz, while Lewis was leader of Deacons' national mergers & acquisitions and private equity groups.

Senior Sydney partner Paul McCann said the appointments reflected the firms existing strategy to build up its business. He said the three new lawyers were the lead partners in their practice areas at their previous firms and that Corrs was very pleased to be able to attract them.

He confirmed Corrs was committed to a lateral hiring policy going forward. "Watch this space," he said. "We haven't stopped; we're looking at key strategic acquisitions when we think they will add too our business."

Seymour joins the property and infrastructure group, which lost leading government property lawyer Chris Mitchell to Blake Dawson Waldron recently. The appointment of Seymour - who has specialised in large commercial property transactions, reflects the firm's push away from government area, as stated by CEO John Denton at the time.

McCann said the workload at Corrs' property practice was growing at an exponential rate and that Seymour could expect to be kept busy servicing financial services clients such as Westpac and ING. The firm's property and infrastructure practice now has 10 partners nationally.

Corrs has hired over 20 new partners in the past 18 months.