StackS timeS

StackS/Goudkamp moveS to martin place

special

edition

StackS/Goudkamp has moved to bigger and brighter premises in the heart of Sydney’s prestigious martin place.The law firm now occupies the entire Level 12 of 39 Martin Place, opposite the Commonwealth Bank and between Elizabeth and Castlereagh Streets.

The new bigger office in Martin Place showsthe success of Stacks/The Law Firm and opens new possibilities for the 21 other Stacks offices to have greater access to the legal expertise available across the operation.

In the 18 years since Tom Goudkamp joined Stacks/The Law Firm to run its Sydney office, his firm has grown from a staff of seven to more than seventy.

In 2003 Tom became managing director and owner of the newly incorporated firm Stacks/Goudkamp, and continues to be part of Stacks/The Law Firm which has 22 offices in NSW, Queensland and ACT.

In eight years Stacks/Goudkamp has grown rapidly to become one of Sydney’s leading and most respected law firms specialising in compensation law.

In recent years Tom has opened branch offices of his firm in Newcastle and is in a joint venture with the Canberra law firm Snedden Hall and Gallop.

He’s brought to the field a unique combination of compassion for his clients and a determination to help them receive a just result and get back on their feet.

Retired High Court judge Michael Kirby will formally declare the new office open in September.

tHe EDITION - SPRING 2011

Tom Goudkamp with staff in the new office

From Tom Goudkamp, Managing Director:

“When Julie Mahony and I and a loyal band of staff broke free from Michell Sillar and joined Maurie at Stacks in Macquarie Street in December 1993 the firm became known as ‘Stacks with Tom Goudkamp’.

We squeezed into the Stacks’ Macquarie Street office, with lawyers sitting wherever they could find space, which more often than not, was in the corridor or library.

The squeeze soon became a crush so in 1995 we moved to Level 6, 1 Castlereagh Street where we occupied the entire floor. ‘We’ll never fill all this space’ I lamented.

Yet despite the horror of the tort law reform

Goudkamp Sees Bright Futureyears the firm somehow kept growing and flourishing as other personal injury law firms went to the wall.

In 2003 the firm became ‘Stacks Goudkamp P/L’, a foundation member firm of the Stacks franchise.

Through the great work of our admirable staff and brilliant lawyers our firm grew commensurately with our rising reputation.

By 2009 we had too many lawyers for the space. Many had to share small offices. No-one complained. Everyone was too busy for that.

But to keep our options open we searched for alternative premises. We found new larger premises and signed a lengthy lease at

Level 12, 39 Martin Place.

Fortunately we had a blank canvass with which to work and so designed what we wanted and needed.

With the tireless work of Sandy Brandt, Anny Carter, a brilliant interior designer and a great builder, the vacant level 12 was transformed into the elegant law office we occupy today.

We’re absolutely delighted and excited by our new home in Martin Place. It’s fantastic and what a location! (just above Tiffany and Co!)

As one staff member said, moving here ‘it’s like starting a new job’.

This is the beginning of a bright and exciting new era for our firm.”

www.stacklaw.com.auMORE THAN 20 LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT NSW, QLD & ACT

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When asked, tom Goudkamp doesn’t hesitate in answering what’s the core principle of his legal work.

compaSSion the core oF StackS/Goudkamp’S miSSion

“Our firm’s principle is compassion for the suffering of others, to understand what they’ve gone through and what they’ve lost. We do whatever we can to help people put their lives back in order. That is the culture of our firm.”

tom as a young boy with his father maarten

tom in amsterdam in 1974

Tom Goudkamp and Sandra ‘Sandy’ Brandt have been a great team for 30 years. Sandy was the receptionist at his previous law firm and moved with him to Stacks. She’s now the office manager at Stacks/Goudkamp and the strong trunk that supports the growing tree that is Tom’s successful law firm.

“Sandy’s been enormously important for the success of the firm, and a good friend for such a long time,” Tom said. ‘It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years.”

Sandy said Tom had never forgotten his own humble beginnings and it imbued him with an unusual compassion and empathy with the people who come to him and the firm for help.

“We are a very social firm, everybody gets on very well. That’s why we have such longevity in our staff. We have more than 20 people who have been with the firm for more than 10 years.”

Sandy said it can get emotional in a law firm that specializes in compensation and personal injury.

“I’ve broken down and cried many times when you see families devastated by accidents. We do our best to help them get back on their feet, but it is especially heartbreaking to meet children who will be affected for the rest of their lives.

“We keep in touch with many of the families

we have helped. They can become friends as we work so closely with them through trying times.”

‘Tom’s motto is that people don’t work for us, they work with us, whether it be the mail boy or the top solicitor, we all work together.”

For ten years Jenny Naumovski’s bright sincere smile has welcomed people at the front desk of Stacks/Goudkamp law firm.

It’s a role she’s proud of and is important to help put anxious people at ease.

“Many people who come to see us are not coming because they are happy. They are here because something terrible has happened and they need our help.

“People need to feel relaxed and welcome when they enter the office. I make sure they are attended to and try to reassure them we’re here to help.

Jenny admits she can get emotional as she learns of people’s stories, particularly where children are involved as she has kids herself. But she’s glad that she’s part of a legal team that works hard to help them. receptionist: Jenny naumovski

the smile that greets you at martin place

It’s been his guiding light ever since he battled his way up from the bottom of the law fraternity to the heights of the new office in Martin Place. It’s been at the centre of everything he’s done as he built the law firm over the past 18 years from a staff of seven to more than seventy.

Compassion for those who need help is at the very centre of the Stacks/Goudkamp law firm. Tom didn’t have the easiest start in life, and he knows what it’s like to struggle. There was no exclusive school, no family connections to open doors to Sydney’s top law firms. He’s never forgotten what it’s like to struggle in life and it infuses all that he does.

“Our firm’s principle is compassion for the suffering of others, to understand what they’ve gone through and what they’ve lost,” he said. “We do whatever we can to help people put their lives back in order. That is the culture of our firm.”

Tom was just two years old when his parents arrived in Australia from a war ravaged Holland. His father Maarten had been a protestant pastor and during the war fought with the Dutch resistance against Nazi occupiers. He was a friend of Prince Bernhard who decorated him for his heroism. But he was exhausted and suffered nightmares from the war. He was sent to Australia to help Dutch migrants settle in their new country.

Tom grew up on the Central Coast of NSW where his parents managed a holiday camp. It was tough work and the family worked from dawn till late. After ten hard years his father returned to the church and was appointed as Anglican minister at Murwillumbah.

In 1967 Tom finished school and was accepted to study law at Australian National University in Canberra. He didn’t get the scholarship he needed to afford to go away to uni, but his parents said they’d help him through the first year. He worked hard and passed. That summer he got a roustabout job on an oil rig off the coast of Timor.

“It was tough, hard dangerous work, but it paid very well and I stuck it out. One of my jobs was tipping bags of blue asbestos dust into a hopper.

There was no warning, no protection, nothing. We weren’t told of the danger or that it could

give us cancer. I was covered in the stuff, and so for 40 years I wondered whether I’ get mesothelioma. I was lucky. I didn’t get it. But it was a lesson for me that through negligence of others great harm could easily come to you.”

Tom used the money to pay back his parents. The next summer he went back to the oil rig. He obtained his law degree in 1971 and with no real prospect of finding work as a lawyer in Sydney where he knew no-one, he settled for Queanbeyan to do his articles. He found he

was not particularly suited to conveyancing and petty criminal cases, so after two years he resigned and set off for Holland to reconnect with his relatives he’d never met.

After six months visiting relatives and travelling around Europe in a clapped out Kombi he returned to Amsterdam almost penniless. By sheer chance he bumped into a former ANU student at busy Amsterdam railway station who told him he’d just left a job in London with a personal injury law firm and that if he wanted, Tom could take his position.

Tom agreed, and the next week he started his career in personal injury law as a law clerk at Lawford and Co of Gray’s Inn.

“I discovered I loved the personal injury work. I got real satisfaction from helping people who were in tough times. I liked winning cases for these poor people and helping them turn their lives around. I was paid only 14 pounds a week so I hitchhiked around the UK taking instructions from prospective new clients for which I was paid extra money so I could survive in London. I’d found my calling.”

To meet Aussie expats he joined the Australia House cricket team, even though he’d never

A great team for 30 years

“The move probably saved me. I was getting into lots of trouble at Wyong High. But at Murwillumbah High I surprised everyone by winning all my races at the swimming carnival shortly after my arrival and became an instant celebrity. It was a good start to my new life.”

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www.stacklaw.com.au

compaSSion the core oF StackS/Goudkamp’S miSSion

tom outside the new martin place building

the ‘tom Goudkamp and Sandra Brandt’ team in the new office

a word from the chairman: maurie Stack

NUCLEAR VETERANS Thousands of Australian military servicemen were exposed to radiation during the 1950s and 60s British nuclear tests at Maralinga in the desert of central Australia. They were never told of the dangers as they were ordered to work in the blast zones.

Over the following decades many of them developed cancers and other health problems that could be traced back to the atomic blasts. Some watched in horror as their children and grandchildren were born with genetic defects that could also have been caused by the radiation.

Stacks/Goudkamp is fighting to get justice for hundreds of these men and their families. With court action impossible in Australia, Stacks/Goudkamp is waiting for the outcome of a court battle in the UK being waged by British nuclear veterans against the UK Ministry of Defence.

The British government is fighting the veterans all the way. Tom Goudkamp says it’s a long hard struggle but he is determined to do all he can to help Australian nuclear veterans bring a class action against the British government. atomic testing at maralinga in 1956

played cricket before. But he made lots of friends and contacts which enabled him to obtain work in Sydney as a solicitor with specialist personal injury firm Beston and Riordan. He was headhunted by Henry Davis York in 1981 and after two years became a partner after he built a huge personal injury practice. He left in 1988 and joined Michelle Sillar as a partner, taking several staff with him including Sandy Brandt and Julie Mahony.

In 1993 Tom and Julie left Michelle Sillar and were about to start Goudkamp Mahony when Tom had a chance meeting with Maurie Stack in Phillip Street. Maurie told Tom that his head lawyer in the Stacks Sydney office had departed and Tom could simply move in and take his place. So with Julie and Sandy and some other loyal followers in tow, Tom joined Stacks. The firm was called Stacks with Tom Goudkamp.

He inherited an almost empty office and 500 files. It was the start of a long and very successful partnership. In 2003 Tom and Maurie set up Stacks/Goudkamp as a separate incorporated entity. Tom now owns the law firm which remains part of the successful Stacks/The Law Firm franchise.

Tom’s success may be due to an unusual business practice he adopted in the big city legal fraternity. He refused to do time recording.

“I think billable hours are demoralizing and demotivating. We don’t think of the money first – we think of the clients. In a way all our work is pro bono as we don’t get paid unless we win or reach a settlement.”

It’s been a successful work principle and Stacks/Goudkamp has literally grown out of its current space at 1 Castlereagh Street where lawyers and staff have been squeezed as the size of the firm grew.

“We are moving because we have simply grown out of our current space,” Tom said.

“We need more room as we are growing so fast. We now have 15 top notch lawyers, experts in compensation and injury law. “

Tom said with a touch of pride that many of the firm’s specialised lawyers are “home grown”.

They came into the firm as paralegals and now are highly qualified accredited specialists in personal injury law, each with their own paralegals.

“People tend to stay with us, much more so than at other law firms. I think it’s due to the culture of the firm. We work well together for the benefit of our clients. We have biannual Loyalty and Longevity lunches for people who’ve been with the firm for ten years or more and at the next one in 2013 I hope we’ll have up to 25 people there.”

Tom’s risen to the top of the legal world. He’s been president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance. He’s been the chair of Specialist Accreditation’s personal injury advisory committee since its creation in 1992.

In 2005 he was awarded the Order of Australia for services to injured people and the legal profession.

In his spare time he works at lowering his golf handicap and stays fit by walking and playing tennis.

He’s rightfully proud of his three children; James who recently completed his PhD in law at Oxford University, Jackie who is in her final year of medicine at Flinders University in Adelaide, and David who is the firm’s assistant office manager.

I first met Tom in 1988 while working with him on the Transcover Review Committee and it was the start of not only a professional association but a long standing friendship.

We were delighted when Tom, along with Julie Mahony, Sandy Brandt and the team joined Stacks/The Law Firm 5 years later.

Since then, it has been a pleasure to watch Tom’s firm grow from strength to strength and we are proud of any small contribution we have made to that success over the last 18 years.

Although an acknowledged leader in the area of personal injury litigation for accident victims, Tom is quite a humble person. No matter their lack of education or social disadvantage, accident victims can intuitively recognise that Tom is a person who genuinely cares about them, who will fight for them and will put their interest before his own.

Tom is a great leader for many reasons but one is his infectious optimism. At a time when many businesses and many law firms are wary about any expansion in our troubled world, Tom and his team have seized the opportunity to move into great new premises which provide room for expansion.

For our own part we are committed to the growth of Stacks/The Law Firm throughout Sydney, regional NSW and then Australia.

The national broadband roll out serves our goal of building a strong organisation whose members can work together to provide specialist legal services to businesses and individuals no matter where they are located.

Our point of difference is that we can provide those expert services in a friendly way and, because so many of our offices are located out of the CBD, at an affordable cost.

Stacks/The Law Firm looks forward to marching ahead arm in arm with Tom and his team.

A great team for 30 years

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WHEELCHAIR BASKETBALL

No amount of money could ever repair the life of Georgina Woods who was struck by a hit and run driver when she was just eight years old. She spent months in a coma and a year in hospital after the collision. Six years later she has severe mental and physical injuries, confining her to a wheelchair.But a court approved award could help her hard pressed family provide the medical assistance she will need for the rest of her life.The driver of the vehicle that struck Georgina was never found, so the only legal recourse for compensation was through the Nominal Defendant Scheme, which allows an injured person to bring a claim where the vehicle is uninsured or the driver cannot be identified.Stacks/Goudkamp lawyers Jnana Gumbert and Julie Mahony took Georgina’s fight for justice to the Supreme Court. Jnana Gumbert is NSW president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance and the runner up in the 2010 Lawyers Weekly Young Gun Award. She started working on the case shortly after little Georgina’s accident.“I got quite close to the family and it’s hard not to get personally involved,” Jnana said. “Georgina’s such a great kid and we wanted to

Stacks/Goudkamp wins $7.5 million for Georgina

Georgina Woods

Stacks/Goudkamp sponsors the Bears women’s wheelchair basketball team, but director Ivan Dzajkovski reckons it’s the lawyers who are getting the most out of the deal. It’s a matter of rolling a mile in the other person’s wheelchair. Ivan says he and the staff who have strapped themselves into a wheelchair and tried out the rugged sport have learned a valuable lesson. “It’s extremely hard,” Ivan said. “My shoulders were so sore the next day with blisters on my hands. We have learned a new level of respect not just for the wheelchair basketballers but for all the people who are confined to wheelchairs or have some other disability. “I had no idea how hard it was to stop rolling to shoot. It was very inspiring to see people like Kylie Gauci and Louise Sauvage move like

bullets around the court, stop on a pin and shoot for the basket. It’s absolutely amazing.” A certain number of able bodied people can play in each team in the wheelchair competition but in reality it’s the able bodied who have the handicap as they struggle to adapt to the new sensation of wheeling around a basketball court trying to throw hoops.Stacks/Goudkamp encourages all its staff to have a go at playing the sport. They learn to appreciate what it is like to be confined to a wheelchair and it helps understanding the hardships of the injured who come to them for help.Ivan was awarded a trophy as a Champion of Wheelchair Sport for his work on sponsorship, an award he treasures in his new office in Martin Place.

Stacks/Goudkamp staff (in orange) from left: kristan harmer, kelly meagher, director ivan dzajkovski, director mary moloney, and emily Gair with members of the Stacks/Goudkamp Bears

do all we could for her.”Julie Mahony, Special Counsel, joined the long campaign to get financial compensation for the young girl. “It was a hard case to win as there were no witnesses to the incident, but we were determined to get a good result for Georgina,” Julie said.In the end Julie and Jnana won $7.5 million for little Georgina Woods, money that will go toward her lifelong medical care.Georgina’s father was overjoyed, and his greatest hope is that some day Georgina will be able to walk once again. For Jnana and Julie that was a great reward for their hard work.

Operating Outside The LawSome lawyers feel they just have to go outside the law to do their bit. When Ruth Hudson finished her communications/law degree she did an internship at SBS television where she met Tim Costello.

He suggested she join World Vision as a press officer. The next thing she knew she was in Aceh helping people get back on their feet after the devastating tsunami which left quarter of a million people dead.

It was 2006, and at age 22 as press officer for World Vision she was shocked at what she saw. She’d been in Aceh for a month when a

6.2 earthquake struck Yogyakarta killing 6,000 people. Ruth arrived the day after the earthquake with a World Vision team and was struck by the horrific devastation.

Her job was to send pictures back of the devastation to help raise awareness of this new disaster. For weeks she scrambled through the devastation doing daily reports on what needed to be done.

The experience set her on the path of personal injury law. “I knew I couldn’t do law that wasn’t about helping people,” she said. Ruth continues to support World Vision and Amnesty

International and human rights.

Ruth is working on Stacks/Goudkamp’s campaign to get justice for nuclear veterans along with Michael Giles, another lawyer who worked for overseas aid missions.

Michael, who is in Stacks/Goudkamp’s Newcastle office, originally comes from Utah. He worked in aid missions in Afghanistan, Somalia, Rwanda, Cambodia and Sri Lanka before coming to Australia. He ran a youth crisis centre while completing his law degree. He’s now working closely with nuclear veterans preparing their cases.

New solicitor to the firm, Joshua Dale, worked for a while on a newspaper in Cambodia writing about government corruption. During his law degree he had an internship at the International Court of Justice helping prosecute Liberian dictator Charles Taylor.

Joshua began his career in personal injury law defending big corporations but quickly decided it was more satisfying to fight for victims and changed sides to join Stacks/Goudkamp.

“It’s a lot more personally rewarding helping people than defending big corporations,” Joshua said.

ruth hudson working with an aid mission to aceh, indonesia, after the 2004 tsunami

compenSation laWYerS

SYDNEY

1800 25 1800www.stacksgoudkamp.com.au

Level 12, 39 Martin Place