The market for lawyers with employment and workplace relations expertise is hotting up with Middletons poaching three Sydney-based partners from HWL Ebsworth. The partners, Bryan Belling, Alice DeBoos and Seamus Burke, will move across to their new home next month and it is understood that five solicitors will also make the switch.
 
Gerard Phillips, head of the  Middletons Workplace Relations Group, said that the  HWL Ebsworth team was  "highly skilled"  and a "top employment and  IR  practice."  He said that move would confirm the old adage that, at least in workplace relations and safety matters, clients choose lawyers and not firms. "The various tiers by which the market categorises law firms do not exist in workplace relations and safety practice," he said. "People look at the practitioners you've got and decide if you have the skilled practitioner, the name and the capacity to carry on legal work in this area."

These newest additions  will mean that Middletons will have recruited five partners in this area of expertise over the past year. The other recruits were Duncan Fletcher, formerly of Mallesons  and Kathy Dalton, who moved across from Herbert Geer in Melbourne.