Building on 50 years of legal experience:
How Bradley & Bray stays ahead with LEAP

Bradley & Bray Lawyers has practised on the Sunshine Coast since 1976 and calls itself “the New-Age Lawyers, with the Old-School Experience.” Fifty years on, it's earned both halves of that line. The firm completed Queensland’s first commercial PEXA settlement in 2019, and some of their people and clients have been with them for decades. Bradley & Bray puts those people at the centre of the firm, and sees efficient systems as one of the best ways to look after them.

A long history, still moving forward

For anyone who remembers printing every email for a paper file, the way legal work gets done today looks very different.

“I do remember us having solely paper files and no electronic records. I remember us printing every email we sent and keeping it on a paper file,” says Peter Griffin, who ran his own practices for more than twenty years before merging his firm with Bradley & Bray in 2022, and now leads its succession practice.

The business owner side of law

For legal practitioner and director Jacob Corbett, running a successful practice is about more than the legal work itself.

“I chose law because I found it challenging, but there are other sides to it. The business owner side is probably something I enjoy just as much, if not more,” he says.

“At the centre point of our firm is staff, is longevity, and is making sure that everyone in this place is as happy as they can be. And I think efficient systems are a really good way to do that because they’re not bogged down in stuff that they don’t want to do,” he says.

Good systems take the friction out of legal work so people can spend more time doing what they’re there to do.

Keeping everything in one place

In LEAP, a matter's documents, emails and accounts sit together in one database, so teams can pick up what they need without tracking down a physical file or piecing a matter together from a folder structure, a mailbox and an accounting system.

“It doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re working on, everybody can see that matter or see those documents that you’re talking about or looking at,” says Debbie Davis, Senior Paralegal and Practice Manager at Bradley & Bray.

“I’m a big advocate for trying to keep everything in one place,” says Jacob. “One of the huge benefits for LEAP is that there’s so much that’s in one place. I can click the tab over and I can see everything for myself.” 

Making the work look easy

“We’re getting to a stage where we can sort of push away some old, outdated processes and really streamline some functionality in the firm,” says Jacob.

Everything that happens on a matter in LEAP is captured against it automatically, so the next step in a process already has what it needs.

"It's watching work push through as a workflow and you don't even have to think about it," he says. "And the client at the end says, God, that was so easy. And you go, I know. How easy was it?"