Alumni - After Allens
David Brewster
Legal Director
Coles Group, Melbourne
This interview was conducted in 2016.
Former Competition Law group partner David Brewster left Allens in 2016 to join the Coles Group as Legal Director. After 13 years as a partner, he moved in-house when offered the opportunity to head the legal team at Coles, which had been a key client.
Since leaving the firm…
I now am involved in an enormous variety of work rather than only competition-related matters. These include industrial relations issues, financial services deals like the sale of the Coles credit card business to Citi, corporate governance, supplier relations and supply chain and logistics issues.
A typical day at work for me is…
getting to work early along with the rest of the team, usually by 7am. A full day, usually with back-to-back meetings until around 5pm, then catch up on BAU work thereafter.
The thing that makes me get out of bed and go to work each morning is…
the team I work with. Having never worked in open plan, I am a big fan. It is conducive to much more personal interaction and communication than the solitary law firm office. I love the fact that, despite the work pace being absolutely frenetic, there are a lot of laughs, which I think is really important.
I'm also passionate about…
our team in stores. We employ more than 100,000 people and the majority work in our stores, doing hard work on their feet most of the day. I never cease to be impressed by our stores – a supermarket is so familiar to people it seems a simple operation, but the logistics and physical effort it takes to deliver thousands of SKUs every day to stores is actually mind boggling. It amazes me there is stock on the shelves, let alone high-quality produce. To visit stores and see team members who do it all with a smile and who are proud about their job is really refreshing for me. It is very real and quite different to life in a law firm.
The best bit of advice given to me was…
that the first year would be an unbelievably steep learning curve. It was!
The best part of my role is…
working at an iconic company like Coles, as part of a leadership team and being exposed every day to critical decision making across all the business functions. It is incredibly exciting and stimulating to constantly be learning new things. I also like that one of the Coles' core values is 'Be Bold' and that people are encouraged to try new things.
At Allens, I worked with/the people I remember most are…
the ones who supported me at key times – when I was nominated for partnership, in supporting and promoting me to their own clients, when I wanted to set up a LGBTI group and make a statement in support of marriage equality. And whoever it was that drilled into me the importance of attention to detail – it is one of the most important characteristics a lawyer can have.