History

Bransgroves Lawyers is the trading name of Consolidated Legal Holdings Pty Limited, an incorporated legal practice founded in 2001. For the first half of the decade we specialised in acting on mortgage enforcements and advances for private lenders and smaller mortgage funds. This was during the apex of the credit boom, and construction finance and private mortgage finance were at their peak and formed a large part of our practice.

Over the course of the second half of the decade, the firm came to the attention of larger institutional lenders, who began to brief us on their more complex advances, enforcement and priority work. We also established one of the largest valuer negligence practices in the country. Our work in assisting lenders with their security documentation and underwriting procedures led to comprehensive compliance consultancy for retail and wholesale mortgage funds.

By 2008 the firm employed 6 solicitors and 4 paralegal staff. 2008 was a milestone year with the publication of Matthew Bransgrove's textbook The Essential Guide to Mortgage Law in NSW and with the elevation of Kate Cooper, to partner. 2008 was also the year the credit market collapsed; the resultant credit squeeze drastically reduced the number of mortgage advances the firm was acting on, while causing enforcements to surge. As a result of the fallout, Bransgroves began to receive instructions from originators and aggregators in their disputes with wholesale funders as well as receiving instructions to sue valuers.

In the last four years the practice has broadened its scope to include almost every conceivable commercial dispute that can arise out of mortgage lending. This in turn, by word of mouth, has brought us clients from a broader cross-section of the lending community, including institutional and inter-state lenders. To cope with the rapid growth in 2012 we moved from our offices in King Street, to a larger premises in Elizabeth Street, overlooking Hyde Park and in 2013 opened our Gold Coast office headed by partner, Georgia Fletcher.