A Brief History of OSPREY Legal
OSPREY Legal is a Karratha/Pilbara story of a professional who does not work in the mining industry and who moved to the Pilbara to support their partner’s mining-related career – how do they continue in their chosen profession in a small isolated city when the employment options in their profession are very limited?
OSPREY Legal is the trading name of sole practitioner Michael Barker (Michael), and commenced trading in Karratha on 1 July 2013. At the time Michael had lived in Karratha for 6 years, been admitted as a lawyer for around 4 years, had been an ‘experienced’ lawyer for around two years, and had two young children aged four and one. Michael was the primary carer of his children and wanted to combine the care of his children with continuing his legal career. Opportunities to have a legal career were virtually non-existent in Karratha. He experimented with being a Karratha-based representative for a Perth-based legal practice, but that option lost its attractiveness very quickly.
In those circumstances, Michael’s goals for setting up OSPREY Legal were a mixture of professional, financial and personal:
– To continue his legal career;
– To bring a private legal practice to the Karratha and Pilbara communities, which at the time were in short supply;
– To represent and assist Osprey Legal’s clients in their legal matters;
– To diversify his legal knowledge and broaden OSPREY Legal’s services over time;
– To manage OSPREY Legal and its clients’ matters around being the primary carer for his children;
– To be there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year (24/7/365) for his kids and give them, stability particularly during the recent ‘bust’ cycle; and
– To support his now ex-partner and free her to pursue her own career, including enabling her to travel for work and working-away purposes when necessary, particularly during the recent ‘bust’ cycle when she worked away every second week for 18 months.
Starting and establishing OSPREY Legal was a steep and often difficult learning curve, including developing necessary internal and external legal practice processes and requirements necessary to run a legal practice, maintaining a personal practising certificate, and representing and assisting OSPREY Legal’s clients with their legal matters. The administrative tasks required to maintain a legal practice can be particularly rigorous and time-consuming. Despite the difficulties, Michael met those challenges, internal and external processes are now routinely met and followed, and OSPREY Legal has maintained and/or exceeded the required professional standards for over seven years.
To reach these goals, OSPREY Legal was set up as a small, efficient, low-overhead business and legal practice, and has always been about finding the right balance between professionally assisting and representing his clients, running a profitable business, and Michael ‘being there’ for his children 24/7/365.
Despite life’s little turmoils, an increased local legal presence and a doom-bust cycle in the Pilbara, OSPREY Legal has achieved all of its original goals, and will continue to serve the Pilbara community into the foreseeable future.
Michael Barker
Managing Solicitor
OSPREY Legal
13 September 2020
