The branding is new. The name is not.

When Mallesons went live with its rebrand earlier this year, dropping the King & Wood name after 14 years, it was doing something law firms rarely do: admitting that the future looks a lot like the past.

Modern Mallesons did not begin as a single firm. It began as four separate practices, each embedded in the commercial life of a different city.

Perth: The oldest thread runs to Perth. In 1832, Alfred Hawes Stone established the first legal practice in Western Australia. The colony of Perth was barely three years old. Stone’s practice, later consolidated as Stone, James & Co, was foundational to WA’s early commercial life.

Sydney: The Sydney line began almost two decades later. In 1849, Montagu Consett Stephen, son of Sir Alfred Stephen, Chief Justice of New South Wales, set up practice in Sydney. Within a year, he had taken on the Australian Mutual Provident Society as a client. AMP remains a client to this day. When his brother joined in 1864, the firm became Stephen and Stephen. It stayed a family practice until 1878, when Alfred Edmund Jaques joined, and by 1888, the firm had taken the name Stephen, Jaques & Stephen. It stayed a family practice for generations. In the firm’s first 100 years, nearly half of all partners had been either a Stephen or a Jaques.

Melbourne: Mallesons’ Melbourne story begins in 1856. Alfred Brooks Malleson, a 25-year-old English lawyer, arrived in Melbourne and built a practice that would become the corporate backbone of Victoria’s commercial law market. By 1858, his firm was handling the legal work to incorporate the National Bank of Australasia, now known as NAB. A banking reputation that endures to this day.

Canberra: The Canberra line came much later. Cyril Davies established a practice in 1926, later trading as Davies Bailey & Cater. In 1974, Stephen Jaques & Stephen absorbed it, adding a federal-capital foothold that later became important for government, regulatory work and FIRB.

By the 1980s, the architecture of a national firm was taking shape.

In 1982, Stephen Jaques & Stephen merged with Stone James to form Stephen Jaques Stone James. The rationale was straightforward: Western Australia’s growing importance in mining and resources.

Then, in 1987, came the merger that brought the Mallesons’ name into the mix. Stephen Jaques Stone James and the Melbourne Mallesons practice combined to form Mallesons Stephen Jaques. It brought together 370 lawyers, making it Australia’s largest law firm.

The firm described this as Australia’s first truly national, fully integrated law firm — a bold claim. And in practice, it was not immediately true.

The early 1990s were hard. A recession, the costs of expanding Mallesons to Asia, and property decisions in Sydney and Perth all put the partnership under pressure. The structure was national. The culture was not.

The turning point was a 1991 partners’ conference at Sanctuary Cove.

The partners voted for the “one firm” model. A National Board was created. The office of Chief Executive Partner was established. And Tony D’Aloisio, who had joined the firm in 1977, became the first CEP.

Under D’Aloisio leadership, the firm preserved a lock-step compensation model, built a national client-relationship system and installed external board members with client-side expertise.

By 1997, the AFR called Mallesons the national merger that had “got it right.”

Mallesons’ international ambition long predated King & Wood.

Stephen Jaques & Stephen opened a London office in 1976, among the first Australian firms offshore. In 1993, Mallesons secured a Beijing licence, becoming the first Australian firm in mainland China.

But the firm had also chased a different path entirely.

In 1999, Mallesons entered advanced merger talks with Clifford Chance, known internally as “Project Indian Pacific.” In 2001, it tried again with Linklaters, dubbed “Project Nelson.” Both collapsed. In hindsight, the Asia-led route may have been the fallback.

In 2012, Mallesons Stephen Jaques and King & Wood PRC Lawyers merged to form King & Wood Mallesons, the first global law firm headquartered in Asia. In 2017, Sue Kench, a Mallesons partner since 1996, became KWM’s Global Chief Executive, the first Australian woman to lead a global law firm. When Kench stepped down at the end of 2024, the global CEO seat was left vacant.

A decision was building.

In December 2025, CEP Renae Lattey and Chairman David Friedlander sent a memo to the partnership. The Australian and Chinese practices would formally separate.

From 30 March 2026, they would operate as independent firms, reverting to their original names: King & Wood in China and Hong Kong, Mallesons in Australia and Singapore.

“We believe independence is our best strategy,” the memo said.

The logic was straightforward. Under the verein, KWM Australia and KWM China were always separate legal entities anyway. Independence made official what was already operationally true.

The rebrand centred on a single word: “Always.”

It is a word that works on two levels. A positioning statement about the firm’s future. And also a quiet nod to a Perth solicitor in 1832, a Sydney firm that took on AMP as a client, and a Melbourne practice that helped create NAB in 1858. Institutions that, like Mallesons itself, are still standing.

The firm that spent 14 years as King & Wood Mallesons has now come home to a name it never really left.