b'The global financial crisisIn mid-2007 a sharp downturn in the US housing marketmonths of the crisis assisting clients with the immediate triggered the global financial crisis (GFC), causing havoc inimpacts on their businesses. Some partners, however, saw financial markets around the world. The interconnectedtheir practices disappear. The firm avoided the employee global financial system saw the impact spread rapidly. Bankslayoffs forced on many companies, but salaries were and investors incurred large losses and millions of people lostfrozen and there was a pause on new hires leading to a their jobs. Perhaps the defining moment of the crisis was thereduction in staff numbers over time. Partner numbers also collapse of the US financial services firm Lehman Brothersfell during this period, reflecting a decline in the overall size in September 2008. The crisis sparked the most severe globalof the legal market as many clients stopped undertaking recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.large-scale projects and sought to reduce costs by bringing more legal work in-house. The impact was felt most in Asia, Australias sound financial system, coupled with strongwhere clients were still recovering from the Asian financial fiscal and monetary policy responses, helped it farecrisis only a decade earlier. This saw the firm reassess its better than most countries. For law firms it was a periodstrategy in Asia and adopt a more targeted approach to its of significant uncertainty. At Allens Arthur Robinson theinvestment in offshore offices.impact was delayed as many in the firm spent the early Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on 16 September 2008.226'