• Harwood Andrews

• Arrangement of material

• About the Geelong Lawyers' Collection

• Lawyers and law associations in the collection

Harwood Andrews by Vivian Hill
Text copyright held by Vivian Hill. For more information see the Copyright page

It could be said that the first amalgamation of Geelong legal firms occurred in March 1842 when Charles Sladen administered the estate of Henry Tyssen and by default succeeded to whatever practice Tyssen had acquired in the 16 months he was Geelong's only resident solicitor before his death from dysentery.

This firm commenced 150 years later in April 1992 as a result of amalgamation of two existing firms, Harwood and Pincott, and Andrews and Backhouse, but through Sladen's later acquired partners and the amalgamation of their firm with Harwood and Pincott it can trace lineage back to Sladen.  In September 1995 another firm, Hodges Hall, (established early 1900s) joined the new firm.  In 1997 the firm, by then, Harwood Andrews Pty Ltd acquired the Melbourne firm of James Sweeney & Co.

Although there are still single practitioners and partners of two or three solicitors still giving very good legal practice.  There is an emphasis on specialists legal knowledge but just as it costs much more to provide the fuel to drive a large semitrailer than to ride a motorboke the mega firms have to be more concerned with commercial principles of budgets, advertising and outcomes than their smaller opposition.

Arrangement of material

The list below describes material held in the Harwood Andrews archive, which is located at 340.099452 Harand Hil/Han on the shelves in the Geelong Lawyers Collection within the Special Collection at the Waterfront campus.  The material has been arranged in date order. 

Date	Title	Item no.
4/1992	Newspaper cutting from Geelong Advertiser re merger of Harwod and Pincott, and Andrews and Backhouse	HA1
9/1995	Newspaper cutting from Geelong Advertiser remerger of Harwood Andrews, and Hodges Hall	HA2
6/1996	Photograph of Harwood Andrews offices, Gheringhap Street, Geelong [Click on image to enlarge it.]	HA3
1997	Harwood Andrews brochure	HA4
29/1/2004	Newspaper cutting from Geelong Advertiser re merger of Harwood Andrews, Price Higgins and Doyle Considine	HA5

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