In our latest Q&A with our recently appointed partners, we get to know Sydney-based major loss specialist, Edward Burrell, a key member of W+K’s Property, Energy + Infrastructure team.

Tell us about your journey to becoming a partner at W+K.

After graduating from the University of Otago and getting admitted to the bar in New Zealand, I practised at a firm in Christchurch. I mainly did insurance litigation – typically smaller stuff like small commercial businesses, home and contents, cars, etc – for a couple of years before making the move to Sydney in 2010.

An associate at my Christchurch firm, who’d previously worked in Sydney, put me in touch with a small national firm who offered me a job doing insurance litigation. I still remember reading the Insurance Contracts Act before I started working in Sydney and wondering why New Zealand didn’t have consolidated legislation like that. At least they’ve got the Bledisloe…

The plan was to stay a short time in Sydney and then head over to London, but my girlfriend (now wife) and I got settled here and never left. One of the drawcards of Sydney was the better work opportunities on offer. Ironically, just one month after I left Christchurch, the earthquakes started, which turned out to create a massive amount of work in the insurance litigation space for both New Zealand and Australia.

My first job in Sydney was where I started to specialise, doing a lot of professional indemnity insurance coverage and defence work. It was post-GFC and there were a lot of claims against valuers by lenders and mortgage insurers. Their insurance premiums and excesses went through the roof. I still remember some of the sole traders telling me it wasn’t financially feasible, so they were throwing in the towel and becoming taxi drivers. It was quite sobering.

After a few years, I went to an international firm for about four years where I did some top-shelf insurance work. There are a couple of matters we ran to judgment which still get cited today. That was an exciting few years, as the firm’s Australian offering was in its infancy and it was great to be a part of and watch its growth to a real powerhouse down under. I also did a couple of years in-house at Lendlease primarily doing disputes work for the engineering business. It’s a fantastic company, and it was great to see the internal operations of a massive business like that. They had really sophisticated in-house legal, commercial and insurance personnel and it was great to regularly work with the CEOs, CFOs and the Global and National General Counsel.

After a few years in-house, a unique opportunity arose to join the Property, Energy + Infrastructure team at W+K and work on major losses. It was too good to say no to, and I started in late 2021.

I feel fortunate to have worked with some great lawyers on my way to W+K – many of whom I still keep in touch with. It’s given me an insight into what things worked well and what didn’t – and I’ve tried to use that to shape the lawyer I am today.

What made you decide to become a lawyer?

The immeasurable influence of Dennis Denuto aside, there were a few things about law that appealed to me.

When I was studying, I liked, and still enjoy, the difficult legal questions that would arise. (Having said that, I wasn’t a fan of all the readings so it was a bit of a double-edged sword.) The legal questions were sometimes a bit abstract to me at uni, but now I can see the real-world consequences these questions have and why getting the answer right is so important. I also liked the fact that studying law opened a lot of doors career-wise – so even if I didn’t want to be a lawyer, there were plenty of other options.

My other degree at uni was physical education (majoring in sports management and exercise prescription) which, while really enjoyable at the time, I didn’t see a clear career pathway in. A legal career was a lot more streamlined. Credit to the big law firms in NZ, they made it pretty easy with the summer clerkships and graduate programmes that they ran. It helped that I was able to do a couple of clerkships over a few summers at different firms. That confirmed that I liked working at a law firm. Once I had that experience, it made continuing with law an easy decision.

What do you think is a major issue facing your area of insurance law?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the major issues facing insurance law reflect the broader issues that society is facing. The immediate one that comes to mind, relevant to the PE+I space, is climate change and the issues that is creating for insurers (and their lawyers). There are some interesting legal and ethical issues getting thrown up – like whether to continue to offer insurance to properties and businesses in flood-prone areas, and if so, on what terms? Also, should insurers indirectly support companies contributing to climate change by offering insurance to them? Lloyd’s, for example, has said it will stop offering fossil fuel insurance by 2030.

The transition away from fossil fuels is also creating a body of work in the renewable energy space. Australia is a little behind other parts of the world, but is going to catch up fast. Over the next 5-10 years, there are going to be some major structural changes in the way Australia’s energy is supplied, and that means that insurers are also going to need to change. It’s a bit like cyber, in that Australian insurers’ aggregation of data and understanding of the risk is still in its infancy. As with most new and evolving technologies, there’s always the chance that something could go wrong, and that means insurers will be involved.

Then there are the current supply chain issues which are impacting any rectification works being carried out by property insurers…

What’s the best piece of advice (work or personal) you’ve been given?

On making partner: “be the partner/mentor/buddy/senior lawyer you needed when you were a junior.”

What do you enjoy most about working at W+K?

There are a few: the PE+I team has a really good vibe – in that there’s a good balance between the work side and the social side of work. I like that we’re providing first class advice on major losses, but everyone in the team has a good sense of humour (especially the vegans). We have regular team lunches and other social gatherings. There is also a smaller cohort within the team that really fancy themselves as singers…

The flexibility around work and family has been a massive game changer for me since coming back to private practice. That’s helped reduce a lot of the struggle when it comes to juggling those competing commitments. In all honesty, I don’t know if this is unique to W+K, because the last firm I worked at was pre-Covid and I suspect a lot of law firms have had to mature quickly in this respect, but I do know that W+K has embraced flexibility – not just in words, but with action (and technology).

What do you get up to outside of law?

My kids keep me pretty busy most weekends and I’m often running them around to dance/swimming/sports lessons. I’m also a particularly avid touch footy player, so I usually drag my kids along to watch my games as penance for making me drive them around.

I’m generally a massive sports fan – I can tell I’m assimilating to Australian life because I now tend to watch more NRL than union. Otherwise, if I manage to get a spare evening and am feeling parched, I don’t mind rehydrating with friends at a pub. I’m also partway through my MBA with the University of Sydney. It’s a fantastic program. It can be tough to find the time for study, but it’s been good to do some learning again.

Complete this sentence: If I wasn’t a lawyer, I would be…

A professional touch footy player.