ORAL HISTORIES
Fighting the good fight LINDY MCNAMARA President in 2013/14, Morry Bailes was at the helm when the debate over proposed changes to compulsory third party insurance was raging. He didn’t shy away from the inevitable stoush with the Government – but in an open interview with the Law Society he reveals it eventually took a toll on his health.
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ermont Technical High School wasn’t the most common feeder school for those entering a law degree in the 1980s, and Morry Bailes admits he didn’t enjoy his university years as he “didn’t fit in”. He wasn’t used to the “private school scene” and found it tough academically, however he persevered and graduated, securing his first – and only – job in the law with Tindall Gask & Co. “I think I spent the first 10 years of my career just being excited about the fact that I was a lawyer,” he revealed in a frank oral history interview recorded by the Law Society. “During Year 10 we were invited to do work experience when we were in secondary school. I applied, and was given some work experience at the Legal Services Commission for two weeks. I think the first week and a half I had to just do filing. Then for the last two days, a criminal lawyer took me to the Adelaide Magistrate’s Court and I found it exhilarating. “I did a stint of work experience at what is now Minter Ellison, in those days it was Baker McEwen, and they offered me a job. I’ve got a slightly embarrassing letter that I wrote back to them saying that I desperately wanted to be a criminal lawyer, so thanks but no thanks! Which is probably insane. “Anyway, I ultimately did my last lot of work experience at Tindall Gask & Co. I
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think I applied for the job at Tindall Gask beforehand and it seemed logical that I should go and do my work experience there. I just couldn’t believe I was in a firm. “I was entranced by opening legal files, legal matters, entranced by everything to do with the law. When I walked in, everyone smoked. I used to smoke – not through enjoyment so much, as social obligation so I immediately, on getting the job, ran out and got myself an ashtray and set myself up in my office. I had to scratch myself – I couldn’t believe it.” That was in 1988 and Morry has remained there ever since, with many of his peers also long-standing members of the business. “We pride ourselves in the culture of the firm – the fact that people hang around proves it. “When I entered the firm, I said that I wanted to do criminal law and I was I guess making a concession or a compromise in coming to an insurance firm. “That sounds very impolite or that I was self-important, but in fact out of the 99 of us who were in the GDLP, virtually everyone got a job. It was more on our terms than the employers, in those days. “Anyway, I said I wanted to do criminal law, and they said that Greg Howe, then a partner, would often mix it up down at the Magistrate’s Court doing guilty pleas
for drink driving matters, and so forth, so that’s what I did. “I then continued doing criminal law, and that ultimately led me to be able to act for a number of associations, including correctional officers and police and so forth. So I ultimately did plaintiff work for injured people – injured coppers, injured correctional officers, and others. But I mixed it up with this criminal and industrial practice, and that is to this day what I do.” In 2002 Morry was appointed Managing Partner at the age of 36. Admitting he easily becomes bored with day-to-day practice, the new position enabled him to focus his enthusiasm toward the firm, growing it into a bigger, “but very solid” business. Today Tindall Gask Bentley is housed in a relatively new building on Light Square and is a daily reminder to Morry of his first foray as a commercial developer and the many lessons he learned during the project. After purchasing the property and with plans for a development, Morry sensibly garnered the commitment of the TGB partners that the firm would move back into the new building once it was completed. “That was a plan conceived before the 2008 global financial crisis. It didn’t seem quite so shiny immediately after the collapse of Lehmann Brothers,” he laughed. “I’ve still got the newspaper of that day in my records to remind me of how horrible things can get. Anyway, banks that were one day going to give (wife) Mel and I the money weren’t the next. So we knocked a couple of storeys off it, concentrated on making it work, and got it up.
