Darren Gardner Profiled in Lawyers Weekly
10/09/2007
The article "West coast world" in this Australian legal magazine [dated September 28] profiles Darren: "It’s a 24-hour job”, says California-based Darren Gardner, the head of the 60-strong international practice at Seyfarth Shaw LLP. Fortunately, he’s someone who “doesn’t require a lot of sleep”. Specialising in labour and employment law, he says “most of the clients work as hard as their lawyers. So they don’t call you at five o’clock and say ‘I need this in the morning’. They’ll call you at 11 o’clock and say, ‘I just thought of this, what do you think? I’ve got a presentation at eight tomorrow to the board, can we get something together?’, and they’ll sit there all night with you: I think corporate America is an unusual beast.” . . . Gardner recently moved to Seyfarth after spending seven years with Minter Ellison in the US. He initially transferred to the firm’s office in New York in 2000, then in 2003 set up its San Francisco office, and headed the office until March. He is registered as a foreign legal consultant with the California Bar, and so cannot actually practice or advise on US law. This means he does a lot of project work. “I do projects where big multinationals have issues that impact on many countries, and I deal with their issues around the world.” The size of the market in the US he says is hard to convey, but one word that springs to mind is: “mind-boggling”.
