Lockett McCullough Lawyers expands with fifth practice after Gold Coast acquisition

Solicitor and vendor Paul Dent will continue to practise with the firm under its new ownership, along with support employees, taking Lockett McCullough's total staff numbers to 12 across its locations that also include sites in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast.

"We're very excited to be expanding down here to assist with more Gold Coast clients," says Lockett, who won the Legal category at the 2024 Australian Young Entrepreneur Awards.

"Everyone usually buys or sells a house in their lifetime, or needs a will, goes through a divorce, buys a business or has someone die - we just want to be the go-to lawyers for everyday mums and dads who need that legal assistance, and we're looking forward to extending that to the Gold Coast."

The firm's legal specialties also cover compensation law, criminal law, disputes, leasing, business law, and more. 

Lockett says she had been waiting for the right opportunity on the Gold Coast for several years, although most of the sales offers she encountered were in the northern Gold Coast suburb of Southport near the courts - a location she perceived to be oversaturated. 

The entrepreneur harboured a vision that her Gold Coast expansion would take place closer to Coolangatta to capture more clients south of the NSW border as well, but when the opportunity to buy Paul Dent Lawyers arose it was too good to pass up.

"I really like the fact that Paul Dent's in Emerald Lakes, Carrara. There aren't many competing firms here, it covers all the areas of law that I want to cover, it's got great staff, Paul's been around for a long time and has a good reputation and good client base," she says, adding its proximity to key arterial roads also helps and its inland location makes commuting easier from Brisbane.

Lockett's ambitions to acquire a Gold Coast firm actually predate her purchase of a practice in Tewantin north of Noosa in 2021, which represented the company's first foray outside of Brisbane.

"One of the big ways that we’ve been able to grow is that my strategy on each acquisition has been around buying firms with legacy," she says.

"I’ve bought firms from lawyers that have been around for years, so they have a huge client database, their name is really well known, but yet they don’t market. Most of the time they barely even have a Facebook page.

"I come in with energy and social media, ready to work with this client database so we can advertise to them and tell them we’ve taken over, as well as the other areas of law that we do. It’s an approach that breeds new life into the practice."

With a background across multiple facets of law including conveyancing, wills and estates, powers of attorney and family law, Lockett's entrepreneurial journey began while working at another law firm. It dawned on her that by securing just one contract a week, she could make the same amount of money as working for one week full-time.

"I needed something that was the right location, right size, right price point, right areas of law," says Lockett, who was 28 years' old when she acquired her first firm in the riverside suburb of Toowong, naming the company after herself and husband Chris McCullough.

"Once I was in it, my mindset completely shifted. It was no longer ‘I can just do one contract a week’ – it was, ‘how much work can I possibly get in the door?’," says Lockett.

The company "outgrew" its office space in Toowong and purchased another firm in the northern Brisbane suburb of Albany Creek in 2018. Four years later Lockett was approached by the only other firm in the suburb - a takeover the firm finalised in 2023.

"We're literally now the only full-service firm in Albany Creek, so that's been really good - it gives us coverage of the whole suburb. If someone Googles a lawyer, it's us, and we tend to get walk-ins as well in that office because we're located on a main road and we're surrounded by foot traffic businesses like a real estate agent, a doctor, a podiatrist, a dance school, a Cartridge World," she says.

"In Albany Creek we capture a lot of people who are downsizing, or people who might live in Brisbane and want to buy a holiday house up the coast and eventually move there. They'll see that we have the Noosa office, so they know they can see us across both locations.

"We also do get a lot of first home buyers as well who are buying in some of the more affordable suburbs in that corridor."

Given the rise of electronic signatures and online instruction forms in the legal profession, the firm sees its clients less frequently nowadays than when the business began, but Lockett still swears by the importance of offering a physical location.

"A lot of firms prefer to just be in a serviced office, but I still believe that having a physical presence is good because people see you, your name stays in their mind when they're driving down the street and they see the sign from the main road. So if they need something, you're front of mind," she says.

"In Toowong we get all of those clients in the surrounding suburbs because they drive past us, and it's similar in Noosa where it's an older demographic. They might go to the coffee shop across the road or be browsing shops on the main road, and they're not the type of demographic that's going to be Googling either."

When asked about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the challenges it may pose to smaller law firms, she says the technology comes with its pros and cons.

"In terms of threats, one of the big ones that we're seeing, not just in the legal industry but with other industries too, are the verification of identity processes," she says.

"With AI coming in it's getting to the point where we have to question whether the person on the other end of a call or email is actually a real person, or is it a scammer, or a hacker? We've certainly had to tighten up our security measures with a lot of verification of identity processes.

"On the other hand, I think AI has certainly made our lives easier so we can get a lot more marketing done."

She concedes that online will platforms have taken away some of the firm's work in terms of administration, but "at the end of the day the client still needs to see a lawyer".

"You can't really replace a human when you're trying to type out an affidavit to get their story, or to ensure that it's drafted correctly," she says.

"If I'm having to do an affidavit for a client in a family law matter, for example setting out what the property pool is, who's entitled to what, who's contributed what, that's not something AI can just do - a lawyer has to meet with a client and get their story, get their details and give advice based on that client's particular situation.

"You hear of clients, especially in the family law space, who might say 'my friend did such and such in her divorce' and the first thing we say is 'don't listen to your friends, your friend is not in the same situation as you'. That's where AI cannot replace this because there are no two situations that are the same."