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The list was created by legal benchmarking group Best Lawyers International.
It named Freehills’ Robert Nicholson as Energy Lawyer of the Year 2012.
Mergers and acquisitions specialist Keira Brennan from Sydney-based law firm Clayton Utz was awarded the review’s Mining Lawyer of the Year.
The wide representation of Freehills lawyers in the list’s mining and energy sectors comes on the back of an increased presence in some of the industry’s largest and most complex transactions.
In addition to the Peabody-Macarthur deal, Freehills lawyers advised Bandanna Energy’s $133 million capital raising in 2011 and worked on the Aston-Whitehaven and Yancoal-Gloucester mergers.
The survey is the fifth Australian list compiled by the US-based polling group and includes more than 240,000 confidential evaluations of private practice lawyers by their professional peers.
Freehills energy industry group leader Robert Merrick said the law firm’s success in the 2012 review was due to a strategy of specialization.
“This year’s outstanding results are testament to our focused approach to the energy and resources sector,” he said.
